The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. I

THE JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. Vol. I. 1867. No. 3. — THE MONADOLOGY. [Translated from the French of Leibnitz , by F. H. Hedge .] — A CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS. [Translated from the German of J. G. Fichte , by A. E. Kroeger .] — I. — VII. — VIII. — IX. — X. — XI. — XII. — INTRODUCTION TO IDEALISM. [From the German of Schelling . Translated by Tom Davidson .] — I.—IDEA OF TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY. — II.—COROLLARIES. — III.—PRELIMINARY ARRANGEMENT OF TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY. — IV.—ORGAN OF TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY. — GENESIS. By A. Bronson Alcott . — I.—VESTIGES. — II.—THE DEUCE. — III.—SERPENT SYMBOL. — IV.—EMBRYONS. — V.—PROMETHEUS. — VI.—IDEAL METHOD. — VII.—DIALOGIC. — ANALYSIS OF HEGEL’S ÆSTHETICS. Translated from the French of Ch. Benard , by J. A. Martling . — Part III. System of the Particular Arts. — THE METAPHYSICS OF MATERIALISM. By D. G. Brinton . — LETTERS ON FAUST. By H. C. Brockmeyer . — I. — II. — III. — IV. — V. — INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY. — CHAPTER V. NECESSITY, CHANCE, FREEDOM. — I. — II. — III. — IV. — V. — VI. — VII. — CHAPTER VI. OF MEDIATION. — ABSTRACTION. — IMMEDIATE KNOWING. — THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAADER. — IN THE QUARRY. By A. C. B.

1. The Monad, of which we shall here speak, is merely a simple substance entering into those which are compound; simple, that is to say, without parts.

2. And there must be simple substances, since there are compounds; for the compound is only a collection or aggregate of simples.

3. Where there are no parts, neither extension, nor figure, nor divisibility is possible; and these Monads are the veritable Atoms of Nature—in one word, the Elements of things.

4. There is thus no danger of dissolution, and there is no conceivable way in which a simple substance can perish naturally.

5. For the same reason, there is no way in which a simple substance can begin naturally, since it could not be formed by composition.

6. Therefore we may say that the Monads can neither begin nor end in any other way than all at once; that is to say, they cannot begin except by creation, nor end except by annihilation; whereas that which is compounded, begins and ends by parts.

7. There is also no intelligible way in which a Monad can be altered or changed in its interior by any other creature, since it would be impossible to transpose anything in it, or to conceive in it any internal movement—any movement excited, directed, augmented or diminished within, such as may take place in compound bodies, where there is change of parts. The Monads have no windows through which anything can enter or go forth. It would be impossible for any accidents to detach themselves and go forth from the substances, as did formerly the Sensible Species of the Schoolmen. Accordingly, neither substance nor accident can enter a Monad from without.

8. Nevertheless Monads must have qualities—otherwise they would not even be entities; and if simple substances did not differ in their qualities, there would be no means by which we could become aware of the changes of things, since all that is in compound bodies is derived from simple ingredients, and Monads, being without qualities, would be indistinguishable one from another, seeing also they do not differ in quantity. Consequently, a plenum being supposed, each place could in any movement receive only the just equivalent of what it had had before, and one state of things would be indistinguishable from another.

9. Moreover, each Monad must differ from every other, for there are never two beings in nature perfectly alike, and in which it is impossible to find an internal difference, or one founded on some intrinsic denomination.

10. I take it for granted, furthermore, 130that every created being is subject to change—consequently the created Monad; and likewise that this change is continual in each.

11. It follows, from what we have now said, that the natural changes of Monads proceed from an internal principle, since no external cause can influence the interior.

12. But, besides the principle of change, there must also be a detail of changes, embracing, so to speak, the specification and the variety of the simple substances.

13. This detail must involve multitude in unity or in simplicity: for as all natural changes proceed by degrees, something changes and something remains, and consequently there must be in the simple substance a plurality of affections and relations, although there are no parts.

14. This shifting state, which involves and represents multitude in unity, or in the simple substance, is nothing else than what we call Perception, which must be carefully distinguished from apperception, or consciousness, as will appear in the sequel. Here it is that the Cartesians have especially failed, making no account of those perceptions of which we are not conscious. It is this that has led them to suppose that spirits are the only Monads, and that there are no souls of brutes or other Entelechies. It is owing to this that they have vulgarly confounded protracted torpor with actual death, and have fallen in with the scholastic prejudice, which believes in souls entirely separate. Hence, also, ill affected minds have been confirmed in the opinion that the soul is mortal.

15. The action of the internal principle which causes the change, or the passage from one perception to another, may be called Appetition. It is true, the desire cannot always completely attain to every perception to which it tends, but it always attains to something thereof, and arrives at new perceptions.

16. We experience in ourselves the fact of multitude in the simple substance, when we find that the least thought of which we are conscious includes a variety in its object. Accordingly, all who admit that the soul is a simple substance, are bound to admit this multitude in the Monad, and Mr. Boyle should not have found any difficulty in this admission, as he has done in his dictionary—Art. Rorarius.

17. Besides, it must be confessed that Perception and its consequences are inexplicable by mechanical causes—that is to say, by figures and motions. If we imagine a machine so constructed as to produce thought, sensation, perception, we may conceive it magnified—the same proportions being preserved—to such an extent that one might enter it like a mill. This being supposed, we should find in it on inspection only pieces which impel each other, but nothing which can explain a perception. It is in the simple substance, therefore—not in the compound, or in machinery—that we must look for that phenomenon; and in the simple substance we find nothing else—nothing, that is, but perceptions and their changes. Therein also, and therein only, consist all the internal acts of simple substances.

18. We might give the name of Entelechies to all simple substances or created Monads, inasmuch as there is in them a certain completeness (perfection), (ἔχουσι τὸ ἔντελες). There is a sufficiency (αὐτάρκεια) which makes them the sources of their own internal actions, and, as it were, incorporeal automata.

19. If we choose to give the name of soul to all that has perceptions and desires, in the general sense which I have just indicated, all simple substances or created Monads may be called souls. But as sentiment is something more than simple perception, I am willing that the general name of Monads and Entelechies shall suffice for those simple substances which have nothing but perceptions, and that the term souls shall be confined to those whose perceptions are more distinct, and accompanied by memory.

20. For we experience in ourselves a state in which we remember nothing, and have no distinct perception, as when we are in a swoon or in a profound and dreamless sleep. In this state the soul does not differ sensibly from a simple Monad; but since this state is not permanent, and since the soul delivers herself from it, she is something more.

13121. And it does not by any means follow, in that case, that the simple substance is without perception: that, indeed, is impossible, for the reasons given above; for it cannot perish, neither can it subsist without affection of some kind, which is nothing else than its perception. But where there is a great number of minute perceptions, and where nothing is distinct, one is stunned, as when we turn round and round in continual succession in the same direction; whence arises a vertigo, which may cause us to faint, and which prevents us from distinguishing anything. And possibly death may produce this state for a time in animals.

22. And as every present condition of a simple substance is a natural consequence of its antecedent condition, so its present is big with its future.

23. Then, as on awaking from a state of stupor, we become conscious of our perceptions, we must have had perceptions, although unconscious of them, immediately before awaking. For each perception can have no other natural origin but an antecedent perception, as every motion must be derived from one which preceded it.

24. Thus it appears that if there were no distinction—no relief, so to speak—no enhanced flavor in our perceptions, we should continue forever in a state of stupor; and this is the condition of the naked Monad.

25. And so we see that nature has given to animals enhanced perceptions, by the care which she has taken to furnish them with organs which collect many rays of light and many undulations of air, increasing their efficacy by their union. There is something approaching to this in odor, in taste, in touch, and perhaps in a multitude of other senses of which we have no knowledge. I shall presently explain how that which passes in the soul represents that which takes place in the organs.

26. Memory gives to the soul a kind of consecutive action which imitates reason, but must be distinguished from it. We observe that animals, having a perception of something which strikes them, and of which they have previously had a similar perception, expect, through the representation of their memory, the recurrence of that which was associated with it in their previous perception, and incline to the same feelings which they then had. For example, when we show dogs the cane, they remember the pain which it caused them, and whine and run.

27. And the lively imagination, which strikes and excites them, arises from the magnitude or the multitude of their previous perceptions. For often a powerful impression produces suddenly the effect of long habit, or of moderate perceptions often repeated.

28. In men as in brutes, the consecutiveness of their perceptions is due to the principle of memory—like empirics in medicine, who have only practice without theory. And we are mere empirics in three-fourths of our acts. For example, when we expect that the sun will rise to-morrow, we judge so empirically, because it has always risen hitherto. Only the astronomer judges by an act of reason.

29. But the cognition of necessary and eternal truths is that which distinguishes us from mere animals. It is this which gives us Reason and Science, and raises us to the knowledge of ourselves and of God; and it is this in us which we call a reasonable soul or spirit.

30. It is also by the cognition of necessary truths, and by their abstractions, that we rise to acts of reflection, which give us the idea of that which calls itself “I,” and which lead us to consider that this or that is in us. And thus, while thinking of ourselves, we think of Being, of substance, simple or compound, of the immaterial, and of God himself. We conceive that that which in us is limited, is in him without limit. And these reflective acts furnish the principal objects of our reasonings.

31. Our reasonings are founded on two great principles, that of “Contradiction,” by virtue of which we judge that to be false which involves contradiction, and that to be true which is opposed to, or which contradicts the false.

32. And that of the “Sufficient Reason,” 132by virtue of which we judge that no fact can be real or existent, no statement true, unless there be a sufficient reason why it is thus, and not otherwise, although these reasons very often cannot be known to us.

33. There are also two sorts of truths—those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary, and their opposite is impossible; those of fact are contingent, and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary, we may discover the reason of it by analysis, resolving it into simpler ideas and truths, until we arrive at those which are ultimate.^[3]

34. It is thus that mathematicians by analysis reduce speculative theorems and practical canons to definitions, axioms and postulates.

35. And finally, there are simple ideas of which no definition can be given; there are also axioms and postulates,—in one word, ultimate principles, which cannot and need not be proved. And these are “Identical Propositions,” of which the opposite contains an express contradiction.

36. But there must also be a sufficient reason for truths contingent, or truths of fact—that is, for the series of things diffused through the universe of creatures—or else the process of resolving into particular reasons might run into a detail without bounds, on account of the immense variety of the things of nature, and of the infinite division of bodies. There is an infinity of figures and of movements, present and past, which enter into the efficient cause of my present writing; and there is an infinity of minute inclinations and dispositions of my soul, present and past, which enter into the final cause of it.

37. And as all this detail only involves other anterior or more detailed contingencies, each one of which again requires a similar analysis in order to account for it, we have made no advance, and the sufficient or final reason must be outside of the series of this detail of contingencies,^[4] endless as it may be.

38. And thus the final reason of things must be found in a necessary Substance, in which the detail of changes exists eminently as their source. And this is that which we call God.

39. Now this Substance being a sufficient reason of all this detail, which also is everywhere linked together, there is but one God, and this God suffices.

40. We may also conclude that this supreme Substance, which is Only,^[5] Universal, and Necessary—having nothing outside of it which is independent of it, and being a simple series of possible beings—must be incapable of limits, and must contain as much of reality as is possible.

41. Whence it follows that God is perfect, perfection being nothing but the magnitude of positive reality taken exactly, setting aside the limits or bounds in that which is limited. And there, where there are no bounds, that is to say, in God, perfection is absolutely infinite.

42. It follows also that the creatures have their perfections from the influence of God, but they have their imperfections from their proper nature, incapable of existing without bounds; for it is by this that they are distinguished from God.

43. It is true, moreover, that God is not only the source of existences, but also of essences, so far as real, or of that which is real in the possible; because the divine understanding is the region of eternal truths, or of the ideas on which they depend, and without Him there would be nothing real in the possibilities, and not only nothing existing, but also nothing possible.

44. At the same time, if there be a reality in the essences or possibilities, or in the eternal truths, this reality must be founded in something existing and actual, consequently in the existence of the necessary Being, in whom essence includes existence, or with whom it is sufficient to be possible in order to be actual.

45. Thus God alone (or the necessary Being) possesses this privilege, that he must exist if possible; and since nothing can hinder the possibility of that which includes no bounds, no negation, and consequently no contradiction, that alone is 133sufficient to establish the existence of God a priori. We have likewise proved it by the reality of eternal truths. But we have also just proved it a posteriori by showing that, since contingent beings exist, they can have their ultimate and sufficient reason only in some necessary Being, who contains the reason of his existence in himself.

46. Nevertheless, we must not suppose, with some, that eternal verities, being dependent upon God, are arbitrary, and depend upon his will, as Des Cartes, and afterward M. Poiret, appear to have conceived. This is true only of contingent truths, the principle of which is fitness, or the choice of the best; whereas necessary truths depend solely on His understanding, and are its internal object.

47. Thus God alone is the primitive Unity, or the simple original substance of which all the created or derived Monads are the products; and they are generated, so to speak, by continual fulgurations of the Divinity, from moment to moment, bounded by the receptivity of the creature, of whose existence limitation is an essential condition.

48. In God is Power, which is the source of all; then Knowledge, which contains the detail of Ideas; and, finally, Will, which generates changes or products according to the principle of optimism. And this answers to what, in created Monads, constitutes the subject or the basis, the perceptive and the appetitive faculty. But in God these attributes are absolutely infinite or perfect, and in the created Monads, or in the Entelechies (or perfectihabiis, as Hermolaus Barbarus translates this word), they are only imitations according to the measure of their perfection.

49. The creature is said to act externally, in so far as it possesses perfection, and to suffer from another (creature) so far as it is imperfect. So we ascribe action to the Monad, so far as it has distinct perceptions, and passion, so far as its perceptions are confused.

50. And one creature is more perfect than another, in this: that we find in it that which serves to account a priori for what passes in the other; and it is therefore said to act upon the other.

51. But in simple substances this is merely an ideal influence of one Monad upon another, which can pass into effect only by the intervention of God, inasmuch as in the ideas of God one Monad has a right to demand that God, in regulating the rest from the commencement of things, shall have regard to it; for since a created Monad can have no physical influence on the interior of another, it is only by this means that one can be dependent on another.

52. And hence it is that actions and passions in creatures are mutual; for God, comparing two simple substances, finds reasons in each which oblige him to accommodate the one to the other. Consequently that which is active in one view, is passive in another—active so far as what we clearly discern in it serves to account for that which takes place in another, and passive so far as the reason of that which passes in it is found in that which is clearly discerned in another.

53. Now, as in the ideas of God there is an infinity of possible worlds, and as only one can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for the choice of God, which determines him to one rather than another.

54. And this reason can be no other than fitness, derived from the different degrees of perfection which these worlds contain, each possible world having a claim to exist according to the measure of perfection which it enfolds.

55. And this is the cause of the existence of that Best, which the wisdom of God discerns, which his goodness chooses, and his power effects.

56. And this connection, or this accommodation of all created things to each, and of each to all, implies in each simple substance relations which express all the rest. Each, accordingly, is a living and perpetual mirror of the universe.

57. And as the same city viewed from different sides appears quite different, and is perspectively multiplied, so, in the infinite multitude of simple substances, there are given, as it were, so many different worlds which yet are only the perspectives 134of a single one, according to the different points of view of each Monad.

58. And this is the way to obtain the greatest possible variety with the greatest possible order—that is to say, the way to obtain the greatest possible perfection.

59. Thus this hypothesis (which I may venture to pronounce demonstrated) is the only one which properly exhibits the greatness of God. And this Mr. Boyle acknowledges, when in his dictionary (Art. Rorarius) he objects to it. He is even disposed to think that I attribute too much to God, that I ascribe to him impossibilities; but he can allege no reason for the impossibility of this universal harmony, by which each substance expresses exactly the perfections of all the rest through its relations with them.

60. We see, moreover, in that which I have just stated, the a priori reasons why things could not be other than they are. God, in ordering the whole, has respect to each part, and specifically to each Monad, whose nature being representative, is by nothing restrained from representing the whole of things, although, it is true, this representation must needs be confused, as it regards the detail of the universe, and can be distinct only in relation to a small part of things, that is, in relation to those which are nearest, or whose relations to any given Monad are greatest. Otherwise each Monad would be a divinity. The Monads are limited, not in the object, but in the mode of their knowledge of the object. They all tend confusedly to the infinite, to the whole; but they are limited and distinguished by the degrees of distinctness in their perceptions.

61. And compounds symbolize in this with simples. For since the world is a plenum, and all matter connected, and as in a plenum every movement has some effect on distant bodies, in proportion to their distance, so that each body is affected not only by those in actual contact with it, and feels in some way all that happens to them, but also through their means is affected by others in contact with those by which it is immediately touched—it follows that this communication extends to any distance. Consequently, each body feels all that passes in the universe, so that he who sees all, may read in each that which passes everywhere else, and even that which has been and shall be, discerning in the present that which is removed in time as well as in space. “Συμπνόιει Πάντα,” says Hippocrates. But each soul can read in itself only that which is distinctly represented in it. It cannot unfold its laws at once, for they reach into the infinite.

62. Thus, though every created Monad represents the entire universe, it represents more distinctly the particular body to which it belongs, and whose Entelechy it is: and as this body expresses the entire universe, through the connection of all matter in a plenum, the soul represents also the entire universe in representing that body which especially belongs to it.

63. The body belonging to a Monad, which is its Entelechy or soul, constitutes, with its Entelechy, what may be termed a living (thing), and, with its soul, what may be called an animal. And the body of a living being, or of an animal, is always organic; for every Monad, being a mirror of the universe, according to its fashion, and the universe being arranged with perfect order, there must be the same order in the representative—that is, in the perceptions of the soul, and consequently of the body according to which the universe is represented in it.

64. Thus each organic living body is a species of divine machine, or a natural automaton, infinitely surpassing all artificial automata. A machine made by human art is not a machine in all its parts. For example, the tooth of a brass wheel has parts or fragments which are not artificial to us; they have nothing which marks the machine in their relation to the use for which the wheel is designed; but natural machines—that is, living bodies—are still machines in their minutest parts, ad infinitum. This makes the difference between nature and art, that is to say, between the Divine art and ours.

65. And the author of nature was able to exercise this divine and infinitely wonderful art, inasmuch as every portion of nature is not only infinitely divisible, as 135the ancients knew, but is actually subdivided without end—each part into parts, of which each has its own movement. Otherwise, it would be impossible that each portion of matter should express the universe.

66. Whence it appears that there is a world of creatures, of living (things), of animals, of Entelechies, of souls, in the minutest portion of matter.

67. Every particle of matter may be conceived as a garden of plants, or as a pond full of fishes. But each branch of each plant, each member of each animal, each drop of their humors, is in turn another such garden or pond.

68. And although the earth and the air embraced between the plants in the garden, or the water between the fishes of the pond, are not themselves plant or fish, they nevertheless contain such, but mostly too minute for our perception.

69. So there is no uncultured spot, no barrenness, no death in the universe—no chaos, no confusion, except in appearance, as it might seem in a pond at a distance, in which one should see a confused motion and swarming, so to speak, of the fishes of the pond, without distinguishing the fishes themselves.

70. We see, then, that each living body has a governing Entelechy, which in animals is the soul of the animal. But the members of this living body are full of other living bodies—plants, animals—each of which has its Entelechy, or regent soul.

71. We must not, however, suppose—as some who misapprehended my thought have done—that each soul has a mass or portion of matter proper to itself, or forever united to it, and that it consequently possesses other inferior living existences, destined forever to its service. For all bodies are in a perpetual flux, like rivers. Their particles are continually coming and going.

72. Thus the soul does not change its body except by degrees. It is never deprived at once of all its organs. There are often metamorphoses in animals, but never Metempsychosis—no transmigration of souls. Neither are there souls entirely separated (from bodies), nor genii without bodies. God alone is wholly without body.

73. For which reason, also, there is never complete generation nor perfect death—strictly considered—consisting in the separation of the soul. That which we call generation, is development and accretion; and that which we call death, is envelopment and diminution.

74. Philosophers have been much troubled about the origin of forms, of Entelechies, or souls. But at the present day, when, by accurate investigations of plants, insects and animals, they have become aware that the organic bodies of nature are never produced from chaos or from putrefaction, but always from seed, in which undoubtedly there had been a preformation; it has been inferred that not only the organic body existed in that seed before conception, but also a soul in that body—in one word, the animal itself—and that, by the act of conception, this animal is merely disposed to a grand transformation, to become an animal of another species. We even see something approaching this, outside of generation, as when worms become flies, or when caterpillars become butterflies.

75. Those animals, of which some are advanced to a higher grade, by means of conception, may be called spermatic; but those among them which remain in their kind—that is to say, the greater portion—are born, multiply, and are destroyed, like the larger animals, and only a small number of the elect among them, pass to a grander theatre.

76. But this is only half the truth. I have concluded that if the animal does not begin to be in the order of nature, it also does not cease to be in the order of nature, and that not only there is no generation, but no entire destruction—no death, strictly considered. And these a posteriori conclusions, drawn from experience, accord perfectly with my principles deduced a priori, as stated above.

77. Thus we may say, not only that the soul (mirror of an indestructible universe) is indestructible, but also the animal itself, although its machine may often perish in part, and put off or put on organic spoils.

13678. These principles have furnished me with a natural explanation of the union, or rather the conformity between the soul and the organized body. The soul follows its proper laws, and the body likewise follows those which are proper to it, and they meet in virtue of the preëstablished harmony which exists between all substances, as representations of one and the same universe.

79. Souls act according to the laws of final causes, by appetitions, means and ends; bodies act according to the laws of efficient causes, or the laws of motion. And the two kingdoms, that of efficient causes and that of final causes, harmonize with each other.

80. Des Cartes perceived that souls communicate no force to bodies, because the quantity of force in matter is always the same. Nevertheless, he believed that souls might change the direction of bodies. But this was because the world was at that time ignorant of the law of nature, which requires the conservation of the same total direction in matter. Had he known this, he would have hit upon my system of preëstablished harmony.

81. According to this system, bodies act as if there were no souls, and souls act as if there were no bodies; and yet both act as though the one influenced the other.

82. As to spirits, or rational souls, although I find that at bottom the same principle which I have stated—namely, that animals and souls begin with the world and end only with the world—holds with regard to all animals and living things, yet there is this peculiarity in rational animals, that although their spermatic animalcules, as such, have only ordinary or sensitive souls, yet as soon as those of them which are elected, so to speak, arrive by the act of conception at human nature, their sensitive souls are elevated to the rank of reason and to the prerogative of spirits.

83. Among other differences which distinguish spirits from ordinary souls, some of which have already been indicated, there is also this: that souls in general are living mirrors, or images of the universe of creatures, but spirits are, furthermore, images of Divinity itself, or of the Author of Nature, capable of cognizing the system of the universe, and of imitating something of it by architectonic experiments, each spirit being, as it were, a little divinity in its own department.

84. Hence spirits are able to enter into a kind of fellowship with God. In their view he is not merely what an inventor is to his machine (as God is in relation to other creatures), but also what a prince is to his subjects, and even what a father is to his children.

85. Whence it is easy to conclude that the assembly of all spirits must constitute the City of God—that is to say, the most perfect state possible, under the most perfect of monarchs.

86. This City of God, this truly universal monarchy, is a moral world within the natural; and it is the most exalted and the most divine among the works of God. It is in this that the glory of God most truly consists, which glory would be wanting if his greatness and his goodness were not recognized and admired by spirits. It is in relation to this Divine City that he possesses, properly speaking, the attribute of goodness, whereas his wisdom and his power are everywhere manifest.

87. As we have established above, a perfect harmony between the two natural kingdoms—the one of efficient causes, the other of final causes—so it behooves us to notice here also a still further harmony between the physical kingdom of nature and the moral kingdom of grace—that is to say, between God considered as the architect of the machine of the universe, and God considered as monarch of the divine City of Spirits.

88. This harmony makes all things conduce to grace by natural methods. This globe, for example, must be destroyed and repaired by natural means, at such seasons as the government of spirits may require, for the chastisement of some and the recompense of others.

89. We may say, furthermore, that God as architect contains entirely God as legislator, and that accordingly sins must carry their punishment with them in the order of nature, by virtue even of the mechanical 137structure of things, and that good deeds in like manner will bring their recompense, through their connection with bodies, although this cannot, and ought not always to, take place on the spot.

90. Finally, under this perfect government, there will be no good deed without its recompense, and no evil deed without its punishment, and all must redound to the advantage of the good—that is to say, of those who are not malcontents—in this great commonwealth, who confide in Providence after having done their duty, and who worthily love and imitate the Author of all good, pleasing themselves with the contemplation of his perfections, following the nature of pure and genuine Love, which makes us blest in the happiness of the loved. In this spirit, the wise and good labor for that which appears to be conformed to the divine will, presumptive or antecedent, contented the while with all that God brings to pass by his secret will, consequent and decisive,—knowing that if we were sufficiently acquainted with the order of the universe we should find that it surpasses all the wishes of the wisest, and that it could not be made better than it is, not only for all in general, but for ourselves in particular, if we are attached, as is fitting, to the Author of All, not only as the architect and efficient cause of our being, but also as our master and the final cause, who should be the whole aim of our volition, and who alone can make us blest.

[Note.—The following completes Fichte’s Second Introduction to the Science of Knowledge, or his Criticism of Philosophical Systems. In the first division of what follows, Fichte traces out his own transcendental standpoint in the Kantian Philosophy, and next proceeds, in the second division, to connect it with what was printed in our previous number, criticising without mercy the dogmatic standpoint. By the completion of this article, we have given to the readers of our Journal Fichte’s own great Introductions to that Science of Knowledge, which is about to be made accessible to American readers through the publishing house of Messrs. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia. Our readers are, therefore, especially prepared to enter upon a study of Fichte’s wonderful system, for none of these Introductions, as indeed none of Fichte’s works of Science, have ever before been published in the English language. In a subsequent number we shall print Fichte’s “Sun-clear Statement regarding the true nature of the Science of Knowledge,” a masterly exhibition of the treatment of scientific subjects in a popular form. We hope that all who have read, or will read these articles, will also enter upon a study of the great work which they are designed to prepare for; the study is worth the pains.—Editor.]

It is not the habit of the Science of Knowledge, nor of its author, to seek protection under any authority whatever. The person who has first to see whether this doctrine agrees with the doctrine of somebody else before he is willing to be convinced by it, is not one whom this science calculates to convince, because the absolute self-activity and independent faith in himself which this science presupposes, is wanting in him.

It was therefore quite a different motive than a desire to recommend his doctrines, which led the author of the Science of Knowledge to state that his doctrine was in perfect harmony with Kant’s doctrine, and was indeed the very same. In this opinion he has been confirmed by the continued elaboration of his system, which he was compelled to undertake. Nevertheless, all others who pass for students of Kant’s philosophy, and who have spoken on the subject—whether they were friends or opponents of the Science of Knowledge—have unanimously asserted the contrary; and by their advice, even Kant himself, who ought certainly best to understand himself, asserts the contrary. If the author of the Science of Knowledge were disposed towards a certain manner of thinking, this would be welcome news to him. Moreover, since he considers it no disgrace to have misunderstood Kant, and 138foresees that to have misunderstood him will soon be considered no disgrace by general opinion, he ought surely not to hesitate to assume that disgrace, especially as it would confer upon him the honor of being the first discoverer of a philosophy which will certainly become universal, and be productive of the most beneficial results for mankind.

It is indeed scarcely explicable why friends and opponents of the Science of Knowledge so zealously contradict that assertion of its author, and why they so earnestly request him to prove it, although he never promised to do so, nay, expressly refused, since such a proof would rather belong to a future History of Philosophy than to a present representation of that system. The opponents of the Science of Knowledge in thus calling for a proof, are certainly not impelled by a tender regard for the fame of the author of that Science; and the friends of it might surely leave the subject alone, as I myself have no taste for such an honor, and seek the only honor which I know, in quite a different direction. Do they clamor for this proof in order to escape my charge, that they did not understand the writings of Kant? But such an accusation from the lips of the author of the Science of Knowledge is surely no reproach, since he confesses as loudly as possible, that he also has not understood them, and that only after he had discovered in his own way the Science of Knowledge, did he find a correct and harmonious interpretation of Kant’s writings. Indeed, that charge will soon cease to be a reproach from the lips of anybody. But perhaps this clamor is raised to escape the charge that they did not recognize their own doctrine, so zealously defended by them, when it was placed before them in a different shape from their own. If this is the case, I should like to save them this reproach also, if there were not another interest, which to me appears higher than theirs, and to which their interest shall be sacrificed. The fact is, I do not wish to be considered for one moment more than I am, nor to ascribe to myself a merit which I do not possess.

I shall therefore, in all probability, be compelled to enter upon the proof which they so earnestly demand, and hence improve the opportunity at present offered to me.

The Science of Knowledge starts, as we have just now seen, from an intellectual contemplation, from the absolute self-activity of the Ego.

Now it would seem beyond a doubt, and evident to all the readers of Kant’s writings, that this man has declared himself on no subject more decisively, nay, I might say contemptuously, than in denying this power of an intellectual contemplation. This denial seems so thoroughly rooted in the Kantian System, that, after all the elaboration of his philosophy, which he has undertaken since^[6] the appearance of the Critique of Pure Reason, and by means of which, as will be evident to any one, the propositions of that first work have received a far higher clearness and development than they originally possessed;—he yet, in one of his latest works, feels constrained to repeat those assertions with undiminished energy, and to show that the present style of philosophy, which treats all labor and exertion with contempt, as well as a most disastrous fanaticism, have resulted from the phantom of an intellectual contemplation.

Is any further proof needed, that a Philosophy, which is based on the very thing so decidedly rejected by the Kantian System, must be precisely the opposite of that system, and must be moreover the very senseless and disastrous system, of which Kant speaks in that work of his? Perhaps, however, it might be well first to inquire, whether the same word may not express two utterly different conceptions in the two systems. In Kant’s terminology, all contemplation is directed upon a Being (a permanent Remaining); and intellectual contemplation would thus signify in his system the immediate consciousness of a non-sensuous Being, or the immediate consciousness (through pure thinking) of the thing per se; and hence a creation of the 139thing per se through its conception, in nearly the same manner as the existence of God is demonstrated from the mere conception of God;—those who do so must look upon God’s existence as a mere sequence of their thinking. Now Kant’s system—taking the direction it did take—may have considered it necessary in this manner to keep the thing per se at a respectful distance. But the Science of Knowledge has finished the thing per se in another manner; that Science knows it to be the completest perversion of reason, a purely irrational conception. To that science all being is necessarily sensuous, for it evolves the very conception of Being from the form of sensuousness. That science regards the intellectual contemplation of Kant’s system as a phantasm, which vanishes the moment one attempts to think it, and which indeed is not worth a name at all. The intellectual contemplation, whereof the Science of Knowledge speaks, is not at all directed upon a Being, but upon an Activity; and Kant does not even designate it, (unless you wish to take the expression “Pure apperception” for such a designation). Nevertheless, it can be clearly shown where in Kant’s System it ought to have been mentioned. I hope that the categorical imperative of Kant occurs in consciousness, according to his System. Now what sort of consciousness is this of the categorical imperative? This question Kant never proposed to himself, because he never treated of the basis of all Philosophy. In his Critique of Pure Reason he treated only of theoretical Philosophy, and could therefore not introduce the categorical imperative; in his Critique of Practical Reason, he treated only of practical Philosophy, wherein the question concerning the manner of consciousness could not arise.

This consciousness is doubtless an immediate, but no sensuous consciousness—hence exactly what I call intellectual contemplation. Now, since we have no classical author in Philosophy, I give it the latter name, with the same right with which Kant gives it to something else, which is a mere nothing; and with the same right I insist that people ought first to become acquainted with the significance of my terminology before proceeding to judge my system.

My most estimable friend, the Rev. Mr. Schulz—to whom I had made known my indefinite idea of building up the whole Science of Philosophy on the pure Ego, long before I had thoroughly digested that idea, and whom I found less opposed to it than any one else—has a remarkable passage on this subject. In his review of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, he says: “The pure, active self-consciousness, in which really every one’s Ego consists, must not be confounded—for the very reason because it can and must teach us in an immediate manner—with the power of contemplation, and must not be made to involve the doctrine that we are in possession of a supersensuous, intellectual power of contemplation. For we call contemplation a representation, which is immediately related to an object. But pure self-consciousness is not representation, but is rather that which first makes a representation to become really a representation. If I say, ‘I represent something to myself,’ it signifies just the same as if I said, ‘I am conscious that I have a representation of this object.’”

According to Mr. Schulz, therefore, a representation is that whereof consciousness is possible. Now Mr. Schulz also speaks of pure self-consciousness. Undoubtedly he knows whereof he speaks, and hence, as philosopher, he most truly has a representation of pure self-consciousness. It was not of this consciousness of the philosopher, however, that Mr. Schulz spoke, but of original consciousness; and hence the significance of his assertion is this: Originally (i. e. in common consciousness without philosophical reflection) mere self-consciousness does not constitute full consciousness, but is merely a necessary compound, which makes full consciousness first possible. But is it not the same with sensuous contemplation? Does sensuous contemplation constitute a consciousness, or is it not rather merely that whereby a representation first becomes a representation? Contemplation without conception is confessedly 140blind. How, then, can Mr. Schulz call (sensuous) contemplation (excluding from it self-consciousness) representation? From the standpoint of the philosopher, as we have just seen, self-consciousness is equally representation; from the standpoint of original contemplation, sensuous contemplation is equally not representation. Or does the conception constitute a representation? The conception without contemplation is confessedly empty. In truth, self-consciousness, sensuous contemplation, and conception, are, in their isolated separateness, not representations—they are only that through which representations become possible. According to Kant, to Schulz, and to myself, a complete representation contains a threefold: 1st. That whereby the representation relates itself to an object, and becomes the representative of a Something—and this we unanimously call the sensuous contemplation (even if I am myself the object of my representation, it is by virtue of a sensuous contemplation, for then I become to myself a permanent in time); 2d. That through which the representation relates itself to the subject, and becomes my representation; this I also call contemplation (but intellectual contemplation), because it has the same relation to the complete representation which the sensuous contemplation has; but Kant and Schulz do not want it called so; and, 3d. That through which both are united, and only in this union become representation; and this we again unanimously call conception.

But to state it tersely: what is really the Science of Knowledge in two words? It is this: Reason is absolutely self-determined; Reason is only for Reason; but for Reason there is also nothing but Reason. Hence, everything, which Reason is, must be grounded in itself, and out of itself, but not in or out of another—some external other, which it could never grasp without giving up itself. In short, the Science of Knowledge is transcendental idealism. Again, what is the content of the Kantian system in two words? I confess that I cannot conceive it possible how any one can understand even one sentence of Kant, and harmonize it with others, except on the same presupposition which the Science of Knowledge has just asserted. I believe that that presupposition is the everlasting refrain of his system; and I confess that one of the reasons why I refused to prove the agreement of the Science of Knowledge with Kant’s system was this: It appeared to me somewhat too ridiculous and too tedious to show up the forest by pointing out the several trees in it.

I will cite here one chief passage from Kant. He says: “The highest principle of the possibility of all contemplation in relation to the understanding is this: that all the manifold be subject to the conditions of the original unity of apperception.” That is to say, in other words, “That something which is contemplated be also thought, is only possible on condition that the possibility of the original unity of apperception can coexist with it.” Now since, according to Kant, contemplation also is possible only on condition that it be thought and comprehended—otherwise it would remain blind—and since contemplation itself is thus subject to the conditions of the possibility of thinking—it follows that, according to Kant, not only Thinking immediately, but by the mediation of thinking, contemplation also, and hence all consciousness, is subject to the conditions of the original unity of apperception.

Now, what is this condition? It is true, Kant speaks of conditions, but he states only one as a fundamental condition. What is this condition of the original unity of apperception? It is this (see § 16 of the Critique of Pure Reason), “that my representations can be accompanied by the ‘I think’”—the word “I” alone is italicised by Kant, and this is somewhat important; that is to say, I am the thinking in this thinking.

Of what “I” does Kant speak here? Perhaps of the Ego, which his followers quietly heap together by a manifold of representations, in no single one of which it was, but in all of which collectively it now is said to be. Then the words of Kant would signify this: I, who think D, am the same I who thought A, B and C, 141and it is only through the thinking of my manifold thinking, that I first became I to myself—that is to say, the identical in the manifold? In that case Kant would have been just such a pitiable tattler as these Kantians; for in that case the possibility of all thinking would be conditioned, according to him, by another thinking, and by the thinking of this thinking; and I should like to know how we could ever arrive at a thinking.

But, instead of tracing the consequences of Kant’s statement, I merely intended to cite his own words. He says again: “This representation, ‘I think,’ is an act of spontaneity, i. e. it cannot be considered as belonging to ‘sensuousness’.“ (I add: and hence, also, not to inner sensuousness, to which the above described identity of consciousness most certainly does belong.) Kant continues: “I call it pure apperception, in order to distinguish it from the empirical (just described) apperception, and because it is that self-consciousness, which, in producing the representation ‘I think’—which must accompany all other representations, and is in all consciousness one and the same—can itself be accompanied by no other representation.”

Here the character of pure self-consciousness is surely clearly enough described. It is in all consciousness the same—hence undeterminable by any accident of consciousness; in it the Ego is only determined through itself, and is thus absolutely determined. It is also clear here, that Kant could not have understood this pure apperception to mean the consciousness of our individuality, nor could he have taken the latter for the former; for the consciousness of my individuality, as an I, is necessarily conditioned by, and only possible through, the consciousness of another individuality, a Thou.

Hence we discover in Kant’s writings the conception of the pure Ego exactly as the Science of Knowledge has described it, and completely determined. Again, in what relation does Kant, in the above passage, place this pure Ego to all consciousness? As conditioning the same. Hence, according to Kant, the possibility of all consciousness is conditioned by the possibility of the pure Ego, or by pure self-consciousness, just as the Science of Knowledge holds. In thinking, the conditioning is made the prior of the conditioned—for this is the significance of that relation; and thus it appears that, according to Kant, a systematic deduction of all consciousness, or, which is the same, a System of Philosophy, must proceed from the pure Ego, just as the Science of Knowledge proceeds; and Kant himself has thus suggested the idea of such a Science.

But some one might wish to weaken this argument by the following distinction: It is one thing to condition, and another to determine.

According to Kant, all consciousness is only conditioned by self-consciousness; i. e. the content of that consciousness may have its ground in something else than self-consciousness; provided the results of that grounding do not contradict the conditions of self-consciousness; those results need not proceed from self-consciousness, provided they do not cancel its possibility.

But, according to the Science of Knowledge, all consciousness is determined through self-consciousness; i. e. everything which occurs in consciousness is grounded, given and produced by the conditions of self-consciousness, and a ground of the same in something other than self-consciousness does not exist at all.

Now, to meet this argument, I must show that in the present case the determinateness follows immediately from the conditionedness, and that, therefore, the distinction drawn between both is not valid in this instance. Whosoever says, “All consciousness is conditioned by the possibility of self-consciousness, and as such I now propose to consider it,” knows in this his investigation, nothing more concerning consciousness, and abstracts from everything he may believe, further to know concerning it. He deduces what is required from the asserted principle, and only what he thus has deduced as consciousness is for him consciousness, and everything else is and remains nothing. Thus the derivability from self-consciousness determines 142for him the extent of that which he holds to be consciousness, because he starts from the presupposition that all consciousness is conditioned by the possibility of self-consciousness.

Now I know very well that Kant has by no means built up such a system; for if he had, the author of the Science of Knowledge would not have undertaken that work, but would have chosen another branch of human knowledge for his field. I know that he has by no means proven his categories to be conditions of self-consciousness; I know that he has simply asserted them so to be; that he has still less deduced time and space, and that which in original consciousness is inseparable from them—the matter which fills time and space—as such conditions; since of these he has not even expressly stated, as he has done in the case of the categories, that they are such conditions. But I believe I know quite as well that Kant has thought such a system; that all his writings and utterances are fragments and results of this system, and that his assertions get meaning and intention only through this presupposition. Whether he did not himself think this system with sufficient clearness and definiteness to enable him to utter it for others; or whether he did, indeed, think it thus clearly and merely did not want so to utter it, as some remarks would seem to indicate, might, it seems to me, be left undecided; at least somebody else must investigate this matter, for I have never asserted anything on this point.^[7] But, however such an investigation may result, this merit surely belongs altogether to the great man; that he first of all consciously separated philosophy from external objects, and led that science into the Self. This is the spirit and the inmost soul of all his philosophy, and this also is the spirit and soul of the Science of Knowledge.

I am reminded of a chief distinction which is said to exist between the Science of Knowledge and Kant’s system, and a distinction which but recently has been again insisted upon by a man who is justly supposed to have understood Kant, and who has shown that he also has understood the Science of Knowledge. This man is Reinhold, who, in a late essay, in endeavoring to prove that I have done injustice to myself, and to other successful students of Kant’s writings—in stating what I have just now reiterated and proved, i. e. that Kant’s system and the Science of Knowledge are the same—proceeds to remark: “The ground of our assertion, that there is an external something corresponding to our representations, is most certainly held by the Critique of Pure Reason to be contained in the Ego; but only in so far as empirical knowledge (experience) has taken place in the Ego as a fact; that is to say, the Critique of Pure Reason holds that this empirical knowledge has its ground in the pure Ego only in relation to its transcendental content, which is the form of that knowledge; but in regard to its empirical content, which gives that knowledge objective validity, it is grounded in the Ego through a something which is not the Ego. Now, a scientific form of philosophy was not possible so long as that something, which is not Ego, was looked for outside of the Ego as ground of the objective reality of the transcendental content of the Ego.”

Thus Reinhold. I have not convinced my readers, or demonstrated my proof, until I have met this objection.

The (purely historical) question is this: Has Kant really placed the ground of experience (in its empirical content) in a something different from the Ego?

I know very well that all the Kantians, except Mr. Beck, whose work appeared after the publication of the Science of Knowledge, have really understood Kant to say this. Nay, the last interpreter of 143Kant, Mr. Schulz, whom Kant himself has endorsed, thus interprets him. How often does Mr. Schulz admit that the objective ground of the appearances is contained in something which is a thing in itself, &c., &c. We have just seen how Reinhold also interprets Kant.

Now it may seem presumptuous for one man to arise and say: “Up to this moment, amongst a number of worthy scholars who have devoted their time and energies to the interpretation of a certain book, not a single one has understood that book otherwise than utterly falsely; they all have discovered in that system the very doctrine which it refutes—dogmatism, instead of transcendental idealism; and I alone understand it rightly.” Yet this presumption might be but seemingly so; for it is to be hoped that other persons will adopt that one man’s views, and that, therefore, he will not always stand alone. There are other reasons why it is not very presumptuous to contradict the whole number of Kantians, but I will not mention them here.

But what is most curious in this matter is this—the discovery that Kant did not intend to speak of a something different from the Ego, is by no means a new one. For ten years everybody could read the most thorough and complete proof of it in Jacobi’s “Idealism and Realism,” and in his “Transcendental Idealism.” In those works, Jacobi has put together the most evident and decisive passages from Kant’s writings on this subject, in Kant’s own words. I do not like to do again what has once been done, and cannot be done better; and I refer my readers with the more pleasure to those works, as they, like all philosophical writings of Jacobi, may be even yet of advantage to them.

A few questions, however, I propose to address to those interpreters of Kant. Tell me, how far does the applicability of the categories extend, according to Kant, particularly of the category of causality? Clearly only to the field of appearances, and hence only to that which is already in us and for us. But in what manner do we then come to accept a something different from the Ego, as the ground of the empirical content of Knowledge? I answer: only by drawing a conclusion from the grounded to the ground; hence by applying the category of causality. Thus, indeed, Kant himself discovers it to be, and hence rejects the assumption of things, &c., &c., outside of us. But his interpreters make him forget for the present instance the validity of categories generally, and make him arrive, by a bold leap, from the world of appearances to the thing per se outside of us. Now, how do these interpreters justify this inconsequence?

Kant evidently speaks of a thing per se. But what is this thing to him? A noumenon, as we can find in many passages of his writings. Reinhold and Schulz also hold it to be a noumenon. Now, what is a noumenon? According to Kant, to Reinhold, and Schulz, a something, which our thinking—by laws to be shown up, and which Kant has shown up—adds to the appearance, and which must so be added in thought;^[8] which, therefore, is produced only through our thinking; not, however, through our free, but through a necessary thinking, which is only for our thinking—for us thinking beings.

But what do those interpreters make of this noumenon or thing in itself? The thought of this thing in itself is grounded in sensation, and sensation they again assert to be grounded in the thing in itself. Their globe rests on the great elephant, and the great elephant—rests on the globe. Their thing in itself, which is a mere thought, they say affects the Ego. Have they then forgotten their first speech, and is the thing, per se, which a moment ago was but a mere thought, now turned into something more? Or do they seriously mean to apply to a mere thought, the exclusive predicate of reality, i. e. causality? And such teachings are put forth as the 144astonishing discoveries of the great genius, who, with his torch, lights up the retrograde philosophical century.

It is but too well known to me that the Kantianism of the Kantians is precisely the just described system—is really this monstrous composition of the most vulgar dogmatism, which allows things per se to make impressions upon us, and of the most decided idealism, which allows all being to be generated only through the thinking of the intelligence, and which knows nothing of any other sort of being. From what I am yet going to say on this subject, I except two men—Reinhold, because with a power of mind and a love of truth which do credit to his heart and head, he has abandoned this system, (which, however, he still holds to be the Kantian system, and I only disagree with him on this purely historical question,) and Schulz, because he has of late been silent on philosophical questions, which leaves it fair to assume that he has begun to doubt his former system.

But concerning the others, it must be acknowledged by all who have still their inner sense sufficiently under control to be able to distinguish between being and thinking and not to mix both together, that a system which thus mixes being and thinking receives but too much honor if it is spoken of seriously. To be sure, very few men may be properly required to overcome the natural tendency towards dogmatism sufficiently to lift themselves up to the free flight of Speculation. What was impossible for a man of overwhelming mental activity like Jacobi, how can it be expected of certain other men, whom I would rather not name? But that these incurable dogmatists should have persuaded themselves that Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was food for them; that they had the boldness to conclude—since Kant’s writings had been praised (God may know by what chance!) in some celebrated journal—they might also now follow the fashion and become Kantians; that since then, for years, they, in their intoxication, have be-written many a ream of valuable paper, without ever, in all this time, having come to their senses, or understood but one period of all they have written; that up to the present day, though they have been somewhat rudely shaken, they have not been able to rub the sleep out of their eyes, but rather prefer to beat and kick about them, in the hope of striking some of these unwelcome disturbers of their peace; and that the German public, so desirous of acquiring knowledge, should have bought their blackened paper with avidity, and attempted to suck up the spirit of it—nay, should even, perhaps, have copied and recopied these writings without ever clearly perceiving that there was no sense in them: all this will forever, in the annals of philosophy, remain the disgrace of our century, and our posterity will be able to explain these occurrences of our times only on the presupposition of a mental epidemic, which had taken hold of this age.

But, will these interpreters reply: your argument is, after all—if we abstract from Jacobi’s writings, which, to be sure, are rather hard to swallow, since they quote Kant’s own words—no more than this: it is absurd; hence Kant cannot have meant to say it. Now, if we admit the absurdity, as unfortunately we must, why, then, might not Kant have said these absurdities, just as well as we others, amongst whom there are some, of whom you yourself confess the merits, and to whom you doubtless will not deny all sound understanding?

I reply: to be the inventor of a system is one thing, and to be his commentators and successors, another. What, in case of the latter, would not testify to an absolute want of sound sense, might certainly evince it in the former. The ground is this: the latter are not yet possessed of the idea of the whole—for if they were so possessed, there would be no necessity for them to study the system; they are merely to construct it out of the parts which the inventor hands over to them; and all these parts are, in their minds, not fully determined, rounded off, and made smooth, until they are united into a natural whole. Now, this construction of the parts may require some time, and during this time it may 145occur that these men determine some parts inaccurately, and hence place them in contradiction with the whole, of which they are not yet possessed. The discoverer of the idea of the whole, on the contrary, proceeds from this idea, in which all parts are united, and these parts he separately places before his readers, because only thus can he communicate the whole. The work of the former is a synthetizing of that which they do not yet possess, but are to obtain through the synthesis; the work of the latter is an analyzing of that which he already possesses. It is very possible that the former may not be aware of the contradiction in which the several parts stand to the whole which is to be composed of them, for they may not have got so far yet as to compare them. But it is quite certain that the latter, who proceeded from the composite, must have thought, or believed that he thought, the contradiction which is in the parts of his representation—for he certainly at one time held all the parts together. It is not absurd to think dogmatism now, and in another moment transcendental idealism; for this we all do, and must do, if we wish to philosophize about both systems; but it is absurd to think both systems as one. The interpreters of Kant’s system do not necessarily think it thus as one; but the author of that system must certainly have done so if his system was intended to effect such a union.

Now, I, at least, am utterly incapable of believing such an absurdity on the part of any one who has his senses; how, then, can I believe Kant to have been guilty of it? Unless Kant, therefore, declares expressly in so many words, that he deduces sensation from an impression of the thing, per se, or, to use his own terminology, that sensation must be explained in philosophy, from a transcendental object which exists outside of us, I shall not believe what these interpreters tell us of Kant. But if he does make this declaration, I shall consider the Critique of Pure Reason rather as the result of the most marvellous accident than as the product of a mind.

But, say our opponents, does not Kant state expressly that “The object is given to us,” and “that this is possible because the object affects us as in a certain manner,” and “that there is a power of attaining representations by the manner in which objects affect us, which power is called sensuousness.” Nay, Kant says even this: “How should our knowledge be awakened into exercise if it were not done by objects that touch our senses and partly produce representations themselves, while partly putting our power of understanding into motion, to compare, connect and separate these representations, and thus to form the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge which is called experience.” Well, these are probably all the passages which can be adduced by our opponents. Now, putting merely passages against passages, and words against words, and abstracting altogether from the idea of the whole, which I assume these interpreters never to have had, let me ask first, if these passages could really not be united with Kant’s other frequently repeated statements, viz., that it is folly to speak of an impression produced upon us by an external transcendental object,—how did it happen that these interpreters preferred to sacrifice the many statements, which assert a transcendental idealism, to these few passages, which assert a dogmatism, than vice versa? Doubtless because they did not attempt the study of Kant’s writings with an impartial mind, but had their heads full of that dogmatism—which constitutes their very being—as the only correct system, which they assumed such a sensible man as Kant must necessarily also hold to be the only correct system; and because they thus did not seek to be taught by Kant, but merely to be confirmed by him in their old way of thinking.

But cannot these seemingly opposite statements be united? Kant speaks in these passages of objects. What this word is to signify, we clearly must learn from Kant himself. He says: “It is the understanding which adds the object to the appearance, by connecting the manifold of the appearance in one consciousness. When this is done, we say we know the 146object, for we have effected a synthetical unity in the manifold of the contemplation, and the conception of this unity is the representation of the object = X. But this X is not the transcendental object (i. e. the thing per se), for of that we know not even so much.”

What, then, is this object? That which the understanding adds to the appearance, a mere thought. Now, the object affects—i. e. something which is a mere thought affects. What does this mean? If I have but a spark of logic, it means simply: it affects in so far as it is; hence it is only thought as affecting. Let us now see what Kant means when he speaks about the “power to obtain representations by the manner in which objects affect us.” Since we only think the affection itself, we doubtless only think likewise that which is common to the affection. Or: if you posit an object with the thought that it has affected you, you think yourself in this case affected; and if you think that this occurs in respect to all the objects of your perception, you think yourself as liable to be affected generally—or, in other words, you ascribe to yourself, through this your thinking, receptivity or sensuousness.

But do we not thus assume, after all, affection to explain knowledge? Let me state the difference in one word: it is true, all our knowledge proceeds from an affection, but not an affection through an object. This is Kant’s doctrine, and that of the Science of Knowledge. As Mr. Beck has overlooked this important point, and as Reinhold does not call sufficient attention to that which makes the positing of a non-Ego possible, I consider it proper to explain the matter in a few words. In doing so I shall use my own terminology, and not Kant’s, because I naturally have my own more at my command.

When I posit myself, I posit myself as a limited; in consequence of the contemplation of my self-positing, I am finite.

This, my limitedness—since it is the condition which makes my self-positing possible—is an original limitedness. Somebody might wish to explain this still further, and either deduce the limitedness of myself as the reflected, from my necessary limitedness as the reflecting; which would result in the statement: I am finite to myself, because I can think only the finite;—or he might explain the limitedness of the reflecting from that of the reflected, which would result in the statement: I can think only the finite, because I am finite. But such an explanation would explain nothing, for I am originally neither the reflecting nor the reflected, but both in their union; which union I cannot think, it is true, because I separate, in thinking, the reflecting from the reflected.

All limitedness is, by its very conception, a determined, and not a general limitedness.

From the possibility of an Ego, we have thus deduced the necessity of a general limitedness of the Ego. But the determinedness of this limitedness cannot be deduced, since it is, as we have seen, that which conditions all Egoness. Here, therefore, all deduction is at an end. This determinedness appears as the absolutely accidental, and furnishes the merely empirical of our knowledge. It is this determinedness, for instance, by virtue of which I am, amongst all possible rational beings, a man, and amongst all men this particular person, &c., &c.

This, my limitation, in its determinedness, manifests itself as a limitation of my practical power (here philosophy is therefore driven from the theoretical to the practical sphere); and the immediate perception of this limitation is a feeling (I prefer to use this word instead of Kant’s “sensation,” for feeling only becomes sensation by being related in thinking to an object); for instance, the feeling of sweet, red, cold, &c.

To forget this original feeling, leads to a bottomless transcendental idealism, and to an incomplete philosophy, which cannot explain the simply sensible predicates of objects. Now, the endeavor to explain this original feeling from the causality of a something, is the dogmatism of the Kantians, which I have just shown up, and which they would like to put on Kant’s shoulders. This, their something, is the everlasting thing per se. All transcendental explanation, on the contrary, stops at 147the immediate feeling, from the reason just pointed out. It is true, the empirical Ego, which transcendental idealism observes, explains this feeling to itself by the law, “No limitation without a limiting;” and thus, through contemplation of the limiting, produces extended matter, of which it now, as of its ground, predicates the merely subjective sensation of feeling; and it is only by virtue of this synthesis that the Ego makes itself an object. The continued analysis and the continued explanation of its own condition, give to the Ego its own system of a universe; and the observation of the laws of this explanation gives to the philosopher his science. It is here that Kant’s Realism is based, but his Realism is a transcendental idealism.

This whole determinedness, and hence also the total of feelings which it makes possible, is to be regarded as a priori—i. e. absolutely, without any action of our own—determined. It is Kant’s receptivity, and a particular of this receptivity is an affection. Without it, consciousness is unexplainable.

There is no doubt that it is an immediate fact of consciousness—I feel myself thus or thus determined. Now, when the oft-lauded philosophers attempt to explain this feeling, is it not clear that they attempt to append something to it which is not immediately involved in the fact? and how can they do this, except through thinking, and through a thinking according to a category, which category is here that of the real ground? Now, if they have not an immediate contemplation of the thing per se and its relations, what else can they possibly know of this category, but that they are compelled to think according to it? They assert nothing but that they are compelled to add in thought a thing as the ground of this feeling. But this we cheerfully admit in regard to the standpoint which they occupy. Their thing is produced by their thinking; and now it is at the same time to be a thing per se, i. e. not produced by thinking.

I really do not comprehend them; I can neither think this thought, nor think an understanding which does think it; and by this declaration, I hope I have done with them forever.

Having finished this digression, we now return to our original intention, which was to describe the procedure of the Science of Knowledge, and to justify it against the attacks of certain philosophers. We said, the philosopher observes himself in the act whereby he constructs for himself the conception of himself; and we now add, he also thinks this act of his.

For the philosopher, doubtless, knows whereof he speaks; but a mere contemplation gives no consciousness; only that is known which is conceived and thought. This conception or comprehension of his activity is very well possible for the philosopher, since he is already in possession of experience; for he has a conception of activity in general, and as such, namely, as the opposite of the equally well known conception of Being; and he also has a conception of this particular activity, as that of an intelligence, i. e. as simply an ideal activity, and not the real causality of the practical Ego; and moreover, a conception of the peculiar character of this particular activity as an in itself returning activity, and not an activity directed upon an external object.

But here as well as everywhere it is to be well remembered that the contemplation is and remains the basis of the conception, i. e. of that which is conceived in the conception. We cannot absolutely create or produce by thinking; we can only think that which is immediately contemplated by us. A thinking, which has no contemplation for its basis, which does not embrace a contemplation entertained in the same undivided moment, is an empty thinking, or is really no thinking at all. At the utmost it may be the thinking of a mere sign of the conception, and if this sign is a word, as seems likely, the mere thoughtless utterance of this word. I determine my contemplation by the thinking of an opposite; this and nothing else is the meaning of the expression—I comprehend the contemplation.

148Through thinking, the activity, which the philosopher thinks, becomes objective to him, i. e. it floats before him, in so far as he thinks it, as something which checks or limits the freedom (the undeterminedness) of his thinking. This is the true and original significance of objectivity. As certain as I think, I think a determined something; or, in other words, the freedom of my thinking, which might have been directed upon an infinite manifold of objects, is now, when I think, only directed upon that limited sphere of my thinking which the present object fills. It is limited to this sphere. I restrict myself with freedom to this sphere, if I contemplate myself in the doing of it. I am restricted by this sphere, if I contemplate only the object and forget myself, as is universally done on the standpoint of common thinking. What I have just now said is intended to correct the following objections and misunderstandings.

All thinking is necessarily directed upon a being, say some. Now the Ego of the Science of Knowledge is not to have being; hence it is unthinkable, and the whole Science, which is built upon such a contradiction, is null and void.

Let me be permitted to make a preliminary remark concerning the spirit which prompts this objection. When the wise men, who urge it, take the conception of the Ego as determined in the Science of Knowledge, and examine it by the rules of their logic, they doubtless think that conception, for how else could they compare and relate it to something else? If they really could not think it, they would not be able to say a word about it, and it would remain altogether unknown to them. But they have really, as we see, happily achieved the thinking of it, and so must be able to think it. Yet, because according to their traditional and misconceived rules, they ought to have been unable to think it, they would now rather deny the possibility of an act, while doing it, than give up their rule; they would believe an old book rather than their own consciousness. How little can these men be aware of what they really do! How mechanically, and without any inner attention and spirit, must they produce their philosophical specimens! Master Jourdan after all was willing to believe that he had spoken prose all his lifetime, without knowing it, though it did appear rather curious; but these men, if they had been in his place, would have proven in the most beautiful prose that they could not speak prose, since they did not possess the rules of speaking prose, and since the conditions of the possibility of a thing must always precede its reality. Nay, if critical idealism should continue to be a burden to them, it is to be expected that they will next go to Aristotle for advice as to whether they really live, or are already dead and buried. By doubting the possibility of ever becoming conscious of their freedom and Egoness, they are covertly already doubting this very point.

Their objection might therefore be summarily put aside, since it contradicts, and thus annihilates itself. But let us see where the real ground of the misunderstanding may be concealed.

All thinking necessarily proceeds from a being, say they. Now what does this mean? If it is to mean what we have just shown up, namely, that there is in all thinking a thought, an object of the thinking, to which this particular thinking confines itself, and by which it seems to be limited, then their premise must undoubtedly be admitted; and it is not the Science of Knowledge which is going to deny it. This objectivity for the mere thinking does doubtless also belong to the Ego, from which the Science of Knowledge proceeds; or, which means the same, to the act whereby the Ego constructs itself for itself. But it is only through thinking and only for thinking that it has this objectivity; it is merely an ideal being.

If, however, the being, of their above assertion, is to mean not a mere ideal, but a real being, i. e. a something, limiting not only the ideal, but also the actually productive, the practical activity of the Ego—that is to say, a something permanent in time and persistent in space—then that assertion of theirs is unwarranted. 149If it were correct, no science of philosophy were possible, for the conception of the Ego would be unthinkable; and self-consciousness, nay, even consciousness, would also be impossible. If it were correct, we, it is true, should be compelled to stop philosophizing; but this would be no gain to them, for they would also have to stop refuting us. But do they not themselves repudiate the correctness of their assertion? Do they not think themselves every moment of their life as free and as having causality? Do they not, for instance, think themselves the free, active authors of the very sensible and very original objections, which they bring up from time to time against our system? Now, is then this “themselves” something which checks and limits their causality, or is it not rather the very opposite of the check, namely, the very causality itself? I must refer them to what I have said in § v. on this subject. If such a sort of being were ascribed to the Ego, the Ego would cease to be Ego; it would become a thing, and its conception would be annihilated. It is true that afterwards—not afterwards as a posteriority in time, but afterwards in the series of the dependence of thinking—we also ascribe such a being to the Ego, which, nevertheless, remains and must remain Ego in the original meaning of the word; this being consisting partly of extension and persistency in space, and in this respect it becomes a body, and partly identity and permanency in time, and in this respect it becomes a soul. But it is the business of philosophy to prove, and genetically to explain how the Ego comes to think itself thus, and all this belongs not to that which is presupposed, but to that which is to be deduced. The result, therefore, remains thus: the Ego is originally only an acting; if you but think it as an active, you have already an Empirical, and hence a conception of it, which must first be deduced.^[9]

But our opponents claim that they do not make their assertion without all proof; they want to prove it by logic, and, if God is willing, by the logical proposition of contradiction.

If there is anything which clearly shows the lamentable condition of philosophy as a science in these our days, it is that such occurrences can take place. If anybody were to speak about mathematics, natural sciences, or any other science, in a manner which would indicate beyond a doubt his complete ignorance concerning the first principles of such a science, he would be at once sent back to the school from which he ran away too soon. But in philosophy it is not to be thus. If in philosophy a man shows in the same manner his complete ignorance, we are, with many bows and compliments to the sharp-sighted man, to give him publicly that private schooling which he so sadly needs, and without betraying the least smile or gesture of disgust. Have, then, the philosophers in two thousand years made clear not a single proposition which might now be considered as established for that science without further proof? If there is such a proposition, it is certainly that of the distinction of logic, as a purely formal science, from real philosophy or metaphysics. But what is really the true meaning of this terrible logical proposition of contradiction which is to crush at one stroke our whole system? As far as I know, simply this: if a conception is already determined by a certain characteristic, then it must not be determined by another opposite characteristic. But by what characteristic the conception is originally to be characterized, this logical theorem does not say, nor can say, for it presupposes the original determination, and is applicable only in so far as that is presupposed. Concerning the original determination another science will have to decide.

These wise men tell us that it is contradictory 150not to determine a conception by the predicate of actual being. Yet how can this be contradictory, unless the conception has first been thus determined by the predicate of actual being, and has then had that predicate denied to it? But who authorized them to determine the conception by that predicate? Do not these adepts in logic perceive that they postulate their principle, and turn around in an evident circle? Whether there really be a conception, which is originally—by the laws of the synthetizing, not of the merely analyzing reason—not determined by that predicate of actual being, this they will have to go and learn from contemplation; logic only warns them against afterwards again applying the same predicate to that conception; of course also, in the same respect, in which they have denied the determinability of the conception by that predicate.

But certainly if they have not yet elevated themselves to the consciousness of that contemplation, which is not determined by the predicate of being, (for that they should unconsciously possess that contemplation itself, Reason herself has taken care of,) then all their conceptions, which can be derived only from sensuous contemplation, are very properly determined by the predicate of this actual being. In that case, however, they must not believe that logic has taught them this asserted connection of thinking and being, for their knowledge of it is altogether derived from their unfortunate empirical self. They, standing on the standpoint of knowing no other conceptions than those derived from sensuous contemplation, would, of course, contradict themselves if they were to think one of their conceptions without the predicate of actual being. We, on our part, are also well content to let them retain this rule for themselves, since it is most assuredly universally valid for the whole sphere of their possible thinking; and to let them always carefully keep an eye on this rule, so that they may not violate it. As for ourselves, however, we cannot use this their rule any longer, for we possess a few conceptions more, resting in a sphere over which their rule does not extend, and about which they can speak nothing, since it does not exist for them. Let them, therefore, attend to their own business hereafter, and leave us to attend to ours. Even in so far as we grant them the rule, namely, that every thinking must have an object of thinking; it is by no means a logical rule, but rather one which logic presupposes, and through which logic first becomes possible. To think, is the same as to determine objects; both conceptions are identical; logic furnishes the rules of this determining, and hence presupposes clearly enough the determining generally as a part of consciousness. That all thinking has an object can be shown only in contemplation. Think! and observe in this thinking how you do it, and you will doubtless find that you oppose to your thinking an object of this thinking.

Another objection, somewhat related to the above, is this: If you do not proceed from a being, how can you, without being illogical, deduce a being? You will never be able to get anything else out of what you take in hand than what is already contained in it, unless you proceed dishonestly and use juggler tricks.

I reply: Nor do we deduce being in the sense in which you use the word, i. e. as being, per se. What the philosopher takes up is an acting, which acts according to certain laws, and what he establishes is the series of necessary acts of this acting. Amongst these acts there occurs one which to the acting itself appears as a being, and which by laws to be shown up, must so appear to it. The philosopher who observes the acting from a higher standpoint, never ceases to regard it as an acting. A being exists only for the observed Ego, which thinks realistically; but for the philosopher there is acting, and only acting, for he thinks idealistically.

Let me express it on this occasion in all clearness: The essence of transcendental idealism generally, and of the Science of Knowledge particularly, consists in this, that the conception of being is not at all viewed as a first and original conception, but simply as a derived conception; derived from the opposition of activity. Hence it is considered only as a negative 151conception. The only positive for the idealist is Freedom; being is the mere negative of freedom. Only thus has idealism a firm basis, and is in harmony with itself. But dogmatism, which believed itself safely reposing upon being, as a basis no further to be investigated or grounded, regards this assertion as a stupidity and horror, for it is its annihilation. That wherein the dogmatist, amongst all the inflictions which he has experienced from time to time, still found a hiding place—namely, some original being, though it were but a raw and formless matter—is now utterly destroyed, and he stands naked and defenceless. He has no weapons against this attack except the assurance of his hearty disgust, and his confession, that he does not understand, and positively cannot and will not think, what is required of him. We cheerfully give credence to this statement, and only beg that he will also place faith in our assurance, that we find it not at all difficult to think our system. Nay, if this should be too much for him, we can even abstain from it, and leave him to believe whatever he chooses on this point. That we do not and cannot force him to adopt our system, because its adoption depends upon freedom, has already been often enough admitted.

I say that the dogmatist has nothing left but the assurance of his incapacity, for the idea of intrenching himself behind general logic, and conjuring the shade of the Stagirite, because he knows not how to defend his own body, is altogether new, and will find few imitators even in this universal state of despair; since the least school knowledge of what logic really is, will suffice to make every one reject this protection.

Let no one be deceived by these opponents, if they adopt the language of idealism, and admitting with their lips the correctness of its views, protest that they know well enough that being is only to signify being for us. They are dogmatists. For every one who asserts that all thinking and consciousness must proceed from a being, makes being something primary; and it is this which constitutes dogmatism. By such a confusion of speech they but demonstrate the utter confusion of their conceptions; for what may a being for us mean, which is, nevertheless, to be an original not-derived being? Who, then, are those “we,” for whom alone this being is? Are they intelligences as such? Then the statement “there is something for the intelligence,” signifies, this something is represented by the intelligence; and the statement “it is only for the intelligence,” signifies, it is only represented. Hence the conception of a being, which, from a certain point of view, is to be independent of the representation, must, after all, be derived from the representation, since it is to be, only through it; and these men would, therefore, be more in harmony with the Science of Knowledge than they believed. Or are those “we” themselves things, original things, things in themselves? How, then, can anything be for them; how can they even be for themselves, since the conception of a thing involves merely that it is, but not that the thing is for itself? What may the word for signify to them? Is it, perhaps, but an innocent adornment which they have adopted for the sake of fashion?

The Science of Knowledge has said, “It is not possible to abstract from the Ego.” This assertion may be regarded from two points of view—either from the standpoint of common consciousness, and then it means, “We never have another representation than that of ourselves; throughout our whole life, and in all moments of our life, we think only I, I, I, and nothing but I.” Or it may be viewed from the standpoint of the philosopher, and then it will have the following significance: “The Ego must necessarily be added in thought to whatever occurs in consciousness;” or as Kant expresses it, “All my representations must be thought as accompanied by—I think.” What nonsense were it to maintain the first interpretation to be the true one, and what wretchedness to refute it in that interpretation. But in the latter interpretation the assertion of the Science of Knowledge will doubtless be acceptable to every one who is but able to understand it; and if it had only been thus understood 152before, we should long ago have been rid of the thing per se, for it would have been seen that we are always the Thinking, whatever we may think, and that hence nothing can occur in us which is independent of us, because it all is necessarily related to our thinking.

“But,” confess other opponents of the Science of Knowledge, “as far as our own persons are concerned, we cannot, under the conception of the Ego, think anything else than our own dear persons as opposed to other persons. Ego (I) signifies my particular person, named, for instance, Caius or Sempronius, as distinguished from other persons not so named. Now, if I should abstract, as the Science of Knowledge requires me to do, from this individual personality, there would be nothing left to me which might be characterized as I; I might just as well call the remainder It.”

Now, what is the real meaning of this objection, so boldly put forth? Does it speak of the original real synthesis of the conception of the individual (their own dear persons and other persons), and do they therefore mean to say, “there is nothing synthetized in this conception but the conception of an object generally—of the It, and of other objects (Its)—from which the first one is distinguished?” Or does that objection fly for protection to the common use of language, and do they therefore mean to say, “In language, the word I (Ego) signifies only individuality?” As far as the first is concerned, every one, who is as yet possessed of his senses, must see that by distinguishing one object from its equals, i. e. from other objects, we arrive only at a determined object, but not at a determined person. The synthesis of the conception of the personality is quite different. The Egoness (the in itself returning activity, the subject-objectivity, or whatever you choose to call it,) is originally opposed to the It, to the mere objectivity; and the positing of these conceptions is absolute, is conditioned by no other positing, is thetical, not synthetical. This conception of the Egoness, which has arisen in our Self, is now transferred to something, which in the first positing was posited as an It, as mere object, and is synthetically united with it; and it is only through this conditional synthesis that there first arises for us a Thou. The conception of Thou arises from the union of the It and the I. The conception of the Ego in this opposition; hence, as conception of the individual, is the synthesis of the I with itself. That which posits itself in the described act, not generally, but as Ego, is I; and that which in the same act is posited as Ego, not through itself, but through me, is Thou. Now it is doubtless possible to abstract from this product of a synthesis, for what we ourselves have synthetized we doubtless can analyze again, and when we so abstract, the remainder will be the general Ego, i. e. the not-object. Taken in this interpretation, the objection would be simply absurd.

But how if our opponents cling to the use of language? Even if it is true that the word “I” has hitherto signified in language only the individual, would this make it necessary that a distinction in the original synthesis is not to be remarked and named, simply because it has never before been noticed? But is it true? Of what use of language do they speak? Of the philosophical language? I have shown already that Kant uses the conception of the pure Ego in the same meaning I attach to it. If he says, “I am the thinking in this thinking,” does he then only oppose himself to other persons, and not rather to all object of thinking generally? Kant says again, “The fundamental principle of the necessary unity of apperception is itself identical, and hence an analytical proposition.” This signifies precisely what I have just stated, i. e. that the Ego arises through no synthesis, the manifold whereof might be further analyzed, but through an absolute thesis. But this Ego is the Egoness generally; for the conception of individuality arises clearly enough through synthesis, as I have just shown; and the fundamental principle of individuality is therefore a synthetical proposition. Reinhold, it is true, speaks of the Ego simply as of the representing; but this does not affect the present case; for when I distinguish 153myself as the representing from the represented, do I then distinguish myself from other persons, and not rather from all object of representation as such? But take even the case of these same much lauded philosophers, who do not, like Kant and like the Science of Knowledge, presuppose the Ego in advance of the manifold of representation, but rather heap it together, out of that manifold; do they, then, hold their one thinking in the manifold thinking to be only the thinking of the individual, and not rather of the intelligence generally? In one word: is there any philosopher of repute, who before them has ventured to discover that the Ego signifies only the individual, and that if the individuality is abstracted from, only an object in general remains?

Or do they mean ordinary use of language? To prove this use, I am compelled to cite instances from common life. If you call to anybody in the darkness “Who is there?” and he, presupposing that his voice is well-known to you, replies, “It is I,” then it is clear that he speaks of himself as this particular person, and wishes to be understood: “It is I, who am named thus or thus, and it is not any one of all the others, named otherwise;” and he so desires to be understood, because your question, “Who is there?” presupposes already that it is a rational being who is there, and expresses only that you wish to know which particular one amongst all the rational beings it may be.

But if you should, for instance—permit me this example, which I find particularly applicable—sew or cut at the clothing of some person, and should unawares cut the person himself, then he would probably cry out: “Look here, this is I; you are cutting me!” Now, what does he mean to express thereby? Not that he is this particular person, named thus or thus, and none other; for that you know very well; but that that which was cut was not his dead and senseless clothing, but his living and sensitive self, which you did not know before. By this “It is I,” the person does not distinguish himself from other persons, but from things. This distinction occurs continually in life; and we cannot take a step or move our hand without making it.

In short, Egoness and Individuality are very different conceptions, and the synthesis of the latter is clearly to be observed. Through the former conception, we distinguish ourselves from all that is external to us—not merely from all persons that are external to us—and hence we embrace by it not our particular personality, but our general spirituality. It is in this sense that the word is used, both in philosophical and in common language. The above objection testifies, therefore, not only to an unusual want of thought, but also to great ignorance in philosophical literature.

But our opponents insist on their incapability to think the required conception, and we must place faith in their assertions. Not that they lack the general conception of the pure Ego, for if they did, they would be obliged to desist from raising objections, just as a piece of log must desist. But it is the conception of this conception which they lack, and which they cannot attain. They have that conception in themselves, but do not know that they have it. The ground of this their incapability does not lie in any particular weakness of their thinking faculties, but in a weakness of their whole character. Their Ego, in the sense in which they take the word—i. e. their individual person—is the last object of their acting, and hence also the limit of their explicit thinking. It is to them, therefore, the only true substance, and reason is only an accident thereof. Their person does not exist as a particular expression of reason; but reason exists to help their person through the world; and if the person could get along just as well without reason, we might discharge reason from service, and there would be no reason at all. This, indeed, lurks in the whole system of their conceptions, and through all their assertions, and many of them are honest enough not to conceal it. Now, they are quite correct as far as they assert this incapacity in respect to their own persons—they only must not state as objective that which has merely subjective 154validity. In the Science of Knowledge the relation is exactly reversed: Reason alone is in itself, and individuality is but accidental; reason is the object, and personality the means to realize it; personality is only a particular manner of manifesting reason, and must always more and more lose itself in the universal form of reason. Only reason is eternal; individuality must always die out. And whosoever is not prepared to succumb to this order of things, will also never get at the true understanding of the Science of Knowledge.

This fact that they can never understand the Science of Knowledge unless they first comply with certain conditions, has been told them often enough. They do not want to hear it again, and our frank warning affords them a new opportunity to attack us. Every conviction, they assert, must be capable of being communicated by conceptions—nay, it must even be possible to compel its acknowledgment. They say it is a bad example to assert that our Science exists for only certain privileged spirits, and that others cannot see or understand anything of it.

Let us see, first of all, what the Science of Knowledge does assert on this point. It does not assert that there is an original and inborn distinction between men and men, whereby some are made capable of thinking and learning what the others, by their nature, cannot think or learn. Reason is common to all, and is the same in all rational beings. Whatsoever one rational being possesses as a talent, all others possess also. Nay, we have even in this present article expressly admitted that the conceptions upon which the Science of Knowledge insists, are actually effective in all rational beings; for their efficacy furnishes the ground of a possibility of consciousness. The pure Ego, which they charge is incapable of thinking, lies at the bottom of all their thinking, and occurs in all their thinking, since all thinking is possible only through it. Thus far everything proceeds mechanically. But to get an insight into this asserted necessity—to think again this thinking—does not lie in mechanism, but, on the contrary, requires an elevation, through freedom, to a new sphere, which our immediate existence does not place in our possession. Unless this faculty of freedom has already existence, and has already been practised, the Science of Knowledge can accomplish nothing in a person. It is this power of freedom which furnishes the premises upon which the structure is to rest.

They certainly will not deny that every science and every art presupposes certain primary rudiments, which must first be acquired before we can enter into the science or art. “But,” say they, “if you only require a knowledge of the rudiments, why do you not teach them to us, if we lack them? Why do you not place them before us definitely and systematically? Is it not your own fault if you plunge us at once in medias res, and require the public to understand you before you have communicated the rudiments?” I reply: that is exactly the difficulty! These rudiments cannot be systematically forced upon you—they cannot be taught to you by compulsion! In one word, they are a knowledge which we can get only from ourselves. Everything depends upon this, that by the constant use of freedom, with clear consciousness of this freedom, we should become thoroughly conscious and enamored of this our freedom. Whenever it shall have become the well-matured object of education—from tenderest youth upwards—to develop the inner power of the scholar, but not to give it a direction; to educate man for his own use, and as instrument of his own will, but not as the soulless instrument of others;—then the Science of Knowledge will be universally and easily comprehensible. Culture of the whole man, from earliest youth—this is the only way to spread philosophy. Education must first content itself to be more negative than positive—more a mutual interchange with the scholar than a working upon him; more negative as far as possible—i. e. education must at least propose to itself this negativeness as its object, and must be positive only as a means of 155being negative. So long as education, whether with or without clear consciousness, proposes to itself the opposite object—labors only for usefulness through others, without considering that the using principle lies also in the individual; so long as education thus eradicates in earliest youth the root of self-activity, and accustoms man not to determine himself but to await a determination through others—so long, talent for philosophy will always remain an extraordinary favor of nature, which cannot be further explained, and which may therefore be called by the indefinite expression of “philosophical genius.”

The chief ground of all the errors of our opponents may perhaps be this, that they have never yet made clear to themselves what proving means, and that hence they have never considered that there is at the bottom of all demonstration something absolutely undemonstrable.

Demonstration effects only a conditioned, mediated certainty; by virtue of it, something is certain if another thing is certain. If any doubt arises as to the certainty of this other, then this certainty must again be appended to the certainty of a third, and so on. Now, is this retrogression carried on ad infinitum, or is there anywhere a final link? I know very well that some are of the former opinion; but these men have never considered that if it were so, they would not even be capable of entertaining the idea of certainty—no, not even of hunting after certainty. For what this may mean: to be certain; they only know by being themselves certain of something; but if everything is certain only on condition, then nothing is certain, and there is even no conditioned certainty. But if there is a final link, regarding which no question can be raised, why it is certain, then, there is an undemonstrable at the base of all demonstration.

They do not appear to have considered what it means: to have proven something to somebody. It means: we have demonstrated to him that a certain other certainty is contained, by virtue of the laws of thinking, which he admits, in a certain first certainty which he assumes or admits, and that he must necessarily assume the first if he assumes the second, as he says he does. Hence all communication of a conviction by proof, presupposes that both parts are at least agreed on something. Now, how could the Science of Knowledge communicate itself to the dogmatist, since they are positively not agreed in a single point, so far as the material of knowledge is concerned, and since thus the common point is wanting from which they might jointly start.^[10]

Finally, they seem not to have considered that even where there is such a common point, no one can think into the soul of the other; that each must calculate upon the self-activity of the other, and cannot furnish him the necessary thoughts, but can merely advise how to construct or think those thoughts. The relation between free beings is a reciprocal influence upon each other through freedom, but not a causality through mechanically effective power. And thus the present dispute returns to the chief point of dispute, from which all our differences arise. They presuppose everywhere the relation of causality, because they indeed know no higher relation; and it is upon this that they base their demand: we ought to graft our conviction on their souls without any activity on their own part. But we proceed from freedom, and—which is but fair—presuppose freedom in them. Moreover, in thus presupposing the universal validity of the mechanism of cause and effect, they immediately contradict themselves; what they say and 156what they do, are in palpable contradiction. For, in presupposing the mechanism of cause and effect, they elevate themselves beyond it; their thinking of the mechanism is not contained in the mechanism itself. The mechanism cannot seize itself, for the simple reason that it is mechanism. Only free consciousness can seize itself. Here, therefore, would be a way to convince them of their error. But the difficulty is that this thought lies utterly beyond the range of their vision, and that they lack the agility of mind to think, when they think an object, not only the object, but also their thinking of the object; wherefore this present remark is utterly incomprehensible to them, and is indeed written only for those who are awake and see.

We reiterate, therefore, our assurance: we will not convince them, because one cannot will an impossibility; and we will not refute their system for them, because we cannot. True, we can refute it easily enough for us; it is very easy to throw it down—the mere breath of a free man destroys it. But we cannot refute it for them. We do not write, speak or teach for them, since there is positively no point from which we could reach them. If we speak of them, it is not for their own sake, but for the sake of others—to warn these against their errors, and persuade these not to listen to their empty and insignificant prattle. Now, they must not consider this, our declaration, as degrading for them. By so doing, they but evince their bad conscience, and publicly degrade themselves amongst us. Besides, they are in the same position in regard to us. They also cannot refute or convince us, or say anything, which could have an effect upon us. This we confess ourselves, and would not be in the least indignant if they said it. What we tell them, we tell them not at all with the evil purpose of causing them anger, but merely to save us and them unnecessary trouble. We should be truly glad if they were thus to accept it.

Moreover, there is nothing degrading in the matter itself. Every one who to-day charges his brother with this incapacity, has once been necessarily in the same condition. For we all are born in it, and it requires time to get beyond it. If our opponents would only not be driven into indignation by our declaration, but would reflect about it, and inquire whether there might not be some truth in it, they might then probably get out of that incapacity. They would at once be our equals, and we could henceforth live in perfect peace together. The fault is not ours, if we occasionally are pretty hard at war with them.

From all this it also appears, which I consider expedient to remark here, that a philosophy, in order to be a science, need not be universally valid, as some philosophers seem to assume. These philosophers demand the impossible. What does it mean: a philosophy is really universally valid? Who, then, are all these for whom it is to be valid? I suppose not to every one who has a human face, for then it would also have to be valid for children and for the common man, for whom thinking is never object, but always the means for his real purpose. Universally valid, then, for the philosophers? But who, then, are the philosophers? I hope not all those who have received the degree of doctor from some philosophical faculty, or who have printed something which they call philosophical, or who, perhaps, are themselves members of some philosophical faculty? Indeed, how shall we even have a fixed conception of the philosopher, unless we have first a fixed conception of philosophy—i. e. unless we first possess that fixed philosophy? It is quite certain that all those who believe themselves possessed of philosophy, as a science, will deny to all those who do not recognize their philosophy the name of philosopher, and hence will make the acknowledgment of their philosophy the criterion of a philosopher. This they must do, if they will proceed logically, for there is only one philosophy. The author of the Science of Knowledge, for instance, has long ago stated that he is of this opinion in regard to his system—not in so far as it is an individual representation of that system, but in so far as it is a system of 157transcendental idealism—and he hesitates not a moment to repeat this assertion. But does not this lead us into an evident circle? Every one will then say, “My philosophy is universally valid for all philosophers;” and will say so with full right if he only be himself convinced, though no other mortal being should accept his doctrine; “for,” he will add, “he who does not recognize it as valid is no philosopher.”

Concerning this point, I hold the following: If there be but one man who is fully and at all times equally convinced of his philosophy, who is in complete harmony with himself in this his philosophy, whose free judgment in philosophizing agrees perfectly with the judgment daily life forces upon him, then in this one man philosophy has fulfilled its purpose and completed its circle; for it has put him down again at the very same point from which he started with all mankind; and henceforth philosophy as a science really exists, though no other man else should comprehend and accept it; nay, though that one man might not even know how to teach it to others.

Let no one here offer the trivial objection that all systematic authors have ever been convinced of the truth of their systems. For this assertion is utterly false, and is grounded only in this, that few know what conviction really is. This can only be experienced by having the fullness of conviction in one’s self. Those authors were only convinced of one or the other point in their system, which perhaps was not even clearly conscious to themselves, but not of the whole of their system—they were convinced only in certain moods. This is no conviction. Conviction is that which depends on no time and no change of condition; which is not accidental to the soul, but which is the soul itself. One can be convinced only of the unchangeably and eternally True: to be convinced of error is impossible. But of such true convictions very few examples may probably exist in the history of philosophy; perhaps but one; perhaps not even this one. I do not speak of the ancients. It is even doubtful whether they ever proposed to themselves the great problem of philosophy. But let me speak of modern authors. Spinoza could not be convinced; he could only think, not put faith in his philosophy; for it was in direct contradiction with his necessary conviction in daily life, by virtue of which he was forced to consider himself free and self-determined. He could be convinced of it only in so far as it contained truth, or as it contained a part of philosophy as a science. He was clearly convinced that mere objective reasoning would necessarily lead to his system; for in that he was correct; but it never occurred to him that in thinking he ought to reflect upon his own thinking, and in that he was wrong, and thus made his speculation contradictory to his life. Kant might have been convinced; but, if I understand him correctly, he was not convinced when he wrote his Critique. He speaks of a deception, which always recurs, although we know that it is a deception. Whence did Kant learn, as he was the first who discovered this pretended deception, that it always recurs, and in whom could he have made the experience that it did so recur? Only in himself. But to know that one deceives one’s self, and still to deceive one’s self is not the condition of conviction and harmony within—it is the symptom of a dangerous inner disharmony. My experience is that no deception recurs, for reason contains no deception. Moreover, of what deception does Kant speak? Clearly of the belief that things per se exist externally and independent of us. But who entertains this belief? Not common consciousness, surely, for common consciousness only speaks of itself, and can therefore say nothing but that things exist for it (i. e. for us, on this standpoint of common consciousness); and that certainly is no deception, for it is our own truth. Common consciousness knows nothing of a thing per se, for the very reason that it is common consciousness, which surely never goes beyond itself. It is a false philosophy which first makes common consciousness assert such a conception, whilst only that false philosophy discovered it in its own sphere. Hence 158this so-called deception—which is easily got rid of, and which true philosophy roots out utterly—that false philosophy has itself produced, and as soon as you get your philosophy perfected, the scales will fall from your eyes, and the deception will never recur. You will, in all your life thereafter, never believe to know more than that you are finite, and finite in this determined manner, which you must explain to yourself, by the existence of such a determined world; and you will no more think of breaking through this limit than of ceasing to be yourself. Leibnitz, also, may have been convinced, for, properly understood—and why should he not have properly understood himself?—he is right. Nay, more—if highest ease and freedom of mind may suggest conviction; if the ingenuity to fit one’s philosophy into all forms, and apply it to all parts of human knowledge—the power to scatter all doubts as soon as they appear, and the manner of using one’s philosophy more as an instrument than as an object, may testify of perfect clearness; and if self-reliance, cheerfulness and high courage in life may be signs of inner harmony, then Leibnitz was perhaps convinced, and the only example of conviction in the history of philosophy.

In conclusion, I wish to refer in a few words to a very curious misapprehension. It is that of mistaking the Ego, as intellectual contemplation, from which the Science of Knowledge proceeds, for the Ego, as idea, with which it concludes. In the Ego, as intellectual contemplation, we have only the form of the Egoness, the in itself returning activity, sufficiently described above. The Ego in this form is only for the philosopher, and by seizing it thus, you enter philosophy. The Ego, as idea, on the contrary, is for the Ego itself, which the philosopher considers. He does not establish the latter Ego as his own, but as the idea of the natural but perfectly cultured man; just as a real being does not exist for the philosopher, but merely for the Ego he observes.

The Ego as idea is the rational being—firstly, in so far as it completely represents in itself the universal reason, or as it is altogether rational and only rational, and hence it must also have ceased to be individual, which it was only through sensuous limitation; and secondly, in so far as this rational being has also realized reason in the eternal world, which, therefore, remains constantly posited in this idea. The world remains in this idea as world generally, as substratum with these determined mechanical and organic laws; but all these laws are perfectly suited to represent the final object of reason. The idea of the Ego and the Ego of the intellectual contemplation have only this in common, that in neither of them the thought of the individual enters; not in the latter, because the Egoness has not yet been determined as individuality; and not in the former, because the determination of individuality has vanished through universal culture. But both are opposites in this, that the Ego of the contemplation contains only the form of the Ego, and pays no regard to an actual material of the same, which is only thinkable by its thinking of a world; while in the Ego of the Idea the complete material of the Egoness is thought. From the first conception all philosophy proceeds, and it is its fundamental conception; to the latter it does not return, but only determines this idea in the practical part as highest and ultimate object of reason. The first is, as we have said, original contemplation, and becomes a conception in the sufficiently described manner; the latter is only idea, it cannot be thought determinately and will never be actual, but will always more and more approximate to the actuality.

These are, I believe, all the misunderstandings which are to be taken into consideration, and to correct which a clear explanation may hope somewhat to aid. Other modes of working against the new system cannot and need not be met by me.

If a system, for instance, the beginning and end, nay, the whole essence of which, is that individuality be theoretically forgotten and practically denied, is denounced as egotism, and by men who, for the very 159reason because they are covertly theoretical egotists and overtly practical egotists, cannot elevate themselves into an insight into this system; if a conclusion is drawn from the system that its author has an evil heart, and if again from this evil-heartedness of the author the conclusion is drawn that the system is false; then arguments are of no avail; for those who make these assertions know very well that they are not true, and they have quite different reasons for uttering them than because they believed them. The system bothers them little enough; but the author may, perhaps, have stated on other occasions things which do not please them, and may, perhaps—God knows, how or where!—be in their way. Now such persons are perfectly in conformity with their mode of thinking, and it would be an idle undertaking to attempt to rid them of their nature. But if thousands and thousands who know not a word of the Science of Knowledge, nor have occasion to know a word of it, who are neither Jews nor Pagans, neither aristocrats nor democrats, neither Kantians of the old or of the modern school, or of any school, and who even are not originals—who might have a grudge against the author of the Science of Knowledge, because he took away from them the original ideas which they have just prepared for the public—if such men hastily take hold of these charges, and repeat and repeat them again without any apparent interest, other than that they might appear well instructed regarding the secrets of the latest literature; then it may, indeed, be hoped that for their own sakes they will take our prayer into consideration, and reflect upon what they wish to say before they say it.

1. All knowing is based upon the agreement of an objective with a subjective. For we know only the true, and truth is universally held to be the agreement of representations with their objects.

2. The sum of all that is purely objective in our knowledge we may call Nature; while the sum of all that is subjective may be designated the Ego, or Intelligence. These two concepts are mutually opposed. Intelligence is originally conceived as that which solely represents—Nature as that which is merely capable of representation; the former as the conscious—the latter as the unconscious. There is, moreover, necessary in all knowledge a mutual agreement of the two—the conscious and the unconscious per se. The problem is to explain this agreement.

3. In knowledge itself, in my knowing, objective and subjective are so united that it is impossible to say to which of the two the priority belongs. There is here no first and no second—the two are contemporaneous and one. In my efforts to explain this identity, I must first have it undone. In order to explain it, inasmuch as nothing else is given me as a principle of explanation beyond these two factors of knowledge, I must of necessity place the one before the other—set out from the one in order from it to arrive at the other. From which of the two I am to set out is not determined by the problem.

4. There are, therefore, only two cases possible:

A. Either the objective is made the first, and the question comes to be how a subjective agreeing with it is superinduced.

The idea of the subjective is not contained in the idea of the objective; they rather mutually exclude each other. The subjective, therefore, must be superinduced upon the objective. It forms no part of the conception of Nature that there should be something intelligent to represent it. Nature, to all appearance, would exist even were there nothing to represent it. The problem may therefore likewise be expressed 160thus: How is the Intelligent superinduced upon Nature? or, How comes Nature to be represented?

The problem assumes Nature, or the objective, as first. It is, therefore, manifestly, a problem of natural science, which does the same. That natural science really, and without knowing it, approximates, at least, to the solution of this problem can be shown here only briefly.

If all knowledge has, as it were, two poles, which mutually suppose and demand each other, they must reciprocally be objects of search in all sciences. There must, therefore, of necessity, be two fundamental sciences; and it must be impossible to set out from the one pole without being driven to the other. The necessary tendency of all natural science, therefore, is to pass from Nature to the intelligent. This, and this alone, lies at the bottom of the effort to bring theory into natural phenomena. The final perfection of natural science would be the complete mentalization of all the laws of Nature into laws of thought. The phenomena, that is, the material, must vanish entirely, and leave only the laws—that is, the formal. Hence it is that the more the accordance with law is manifested in Nature itself, the more the wrappage disappears—the phenomena themselves become more mental, and at last entirely cease. Optical phenomena are nothing more than a geometry whose lines are drawn through the light; and even this light itself is of doubtful materiality. In the phenomena of magnetism all trace of matter has already disappeared, and of those of gravitation; which even physical philosophers believed could be attributed only to direct spiritual influence, there remains nothing but the law, whose action on a large scale is the mechanism of the heavenly motions. The complete theory of Nature would be that whereby the whole of Nature should be resolved into an intelligence. The dead and unconscious products of Nature are only unsuccessful attempts of Nature to reflect itself, and dead Nature, so-called, is merely an unripe Intelligence; hence in its phenomena the intelligent character peers through, though yet unconsciously. Its highest aim, namely, that of becoming completely self-objective, Nature reaches only in its highest and last reflection, which is nothing else than man, or, more generally, what we call reason, by means of which Nature turns completely back upon itself, and by which is manifested that Nature is originally identical with what in us is known as intelligent and conscious.

This may perhaps suffice to prove that natural science has a necessary tendency to render Nature intelligent. By this very tendency it is that it becomes natural philosophy, which is one of the two necessary fundamental sciences of philosophy.

B. Or the subjective is made the first, and the problem is, how an objective is superinduced agreeing with it.

If all knowledge is based upon the agreement of these two, then the task of explaining this agreement is plainly the highest for all knowledge; and if, as is generally admitted, philosophy is the highest and loftiest of all sciences, it is certainly the main task of philosophy.

But the problem demands only the explanation of that agreement generally, and leaves it entirely undecided where the explanation shall begin, what it shall make its first, and what its second. Moreover, as the two opposites are mutually necessary to each other, the result of the operation must be the same, from whichever point it sets out.

To make the objective the first, and derive the subjective from it, is, as has just been shown, the task of natural philosophy.

If, therefore, there is a transcendental philosophy, the only course that remains for it is the opposite one, namely: to set out from the subjective as the first and the absolute, and deduce the origin of the objective from it.

Into these two possible directions of philosophy, therefore, natural and transcendental philosophy have separated themselves; and if all philosophy must have for its aim to make either an Intelligence out of Nature or a Nature out of Intelligence, then transcendental philosophy, to which the latter task belongs, is the 161other necessary fundamental science of philosophy.

In the foregoing we have not only deduced the idea of transcendental philosophy, but have also afforded the reader a glance into the whole system of philosophy, composed, as has been shown, of two principal sciences, which, though opposed in principle and direction, are counter-parts and complements of each other. Not the whole system of philosophy, but only one of the principal sciences of it, is to be here discussed, and, in the first place, to be more clearly characterized in accordance with the idea already deduced.

1. If, for transcendental philosophy, the subjective is the starting point, the only ground of all reality, and the sole principle of explanation for everything else, it necessarily begins with universal doubt regarding the reality of the objective.

As the natural philosopher, wholly intent upon the objective, seeks, above all things, to exclude every admixture of the subjective from his knowledge, so, on the other hand, the transcendental philosopher seeks nothing so much as the entire exclusion of the objective from the purely subjective principle of knowledge. The instrument of separation is absolute scepticism—not that half-scepticism which is directed merely against the vulgar prejudices of mankind and never sees the foundation—but a thorough-going scepticism, which aims not at individual prejudices, but at the fundamental prejudice, with which all others must stand or fall. For over and above the artificial and conventional prejudices of man, there are others of far deeper origin, which have been placed in him, not by art or education, but by Nature itself, and which pass with all other men, except the philosopher, as the principles of knowledge, and with the mere self-thinker as the test of all truth.

The one fundamental prejudice to which all others are reducible, is this: that there are things outside of us; an opinion which, while it rests neither on proofs nor on conclusions (for there is not a single irrefragable proof of it), and yet cannot be uprooted by any opposite proof (naturam furcâ expellas, tamen usque redibit), lays claim to immediate certainty; whereas, inasmuch as it refers to something quite different from us—yea, opposed to us—and of which there is no evidence how it can come into immediate consciousness, it must be regarded as nothing more than a prejudice—a natural and original one, to be sure, but nevertheless a prejudice.

The contradiction lying in the fact that a conclusion which in its nature cannot be immediately certain, is, nevertheless, blindly and without grounds, accepted as such, cannot be solved by transcendental philosophy, except on the assumption that this conclusion is implicitly, and in a manner hitherto not manifest, not founded upon, but identical, and one and the same with an affirmation which is immediately certain; and to demonstrate this identity will really be the task of transcendental philosophy.

2. Now, even for the ordinary use of reason, there is nothing immediately certain except the affirmation I am, which, as it loses all meaning outside of immediate consciousness, is the most individual of all truths, and the absolute prejudice, which must be assumed if anything else is to be made certain. The affirmation There are things outside of us, will therefore be certain for the transcendental philosopher, only through its identity with the affirmation I am, and its certainty will be only equal to the certainty of the affirmation from which it derives it.

According to this view, transcendental knowledge would be distinguished from ordinary knowledge in two particulars.

First—That for it the certainty of the existence of external objects is a mere prejudice, which it oversteps, in order to find the grounds of it. (It can never be the business of the transcendental philosopher to prove the existence of things in themselves, but only to show that it is a natural and necessary prejudice to assume external objects as real.)

Second—That the two affirmations, I am and There are things outside of me, which in the ordinary consciousness run together, 162are, in the former, separated and the one placed before the other, with a view to demonstrate as a fact their identity, and that immediate connection which in the other is only felt. By the act of this separation, when it is complete, the philosopher transports himself to the transcendental point of view, which is by no means a natural, but an artificial one.

3. If, for the transcendental philosopher, the subjective alone has original reality, he will also make the subjective alone in knowledge directly his object; the objective will only become an object indirectly to him, and, whereas, in ordinary knowledge, knowledge itself—the act of knowing—vanishes in the object, in transcendental knowledge, on the contrary, the object, as such, will vanish in the act of knowing. Transcendental knowledge is a knowledge of knowing, in so far as it is purely subjective.

Thus, for example, in intuition, it is only the objective that reaches the ordinary consciousness; the act of intuition itself is lost in the object; whereas the transcendental mode of intuition rather gets only a glimpse of the object of intuition through the act. Ordinary thought, therefore, is a mechanism in which ideas prevail, without, however, being distinguished as ideas; whereas transcendental thought interrupts this mechanism, and in becoming conscious of the idea as an act, rises to the idea of the idea. In ordinary action, the acting itself is forgotten in the object of the action; philosophizing is also an action, but not an action only. It is likewise a continued self-intuition in this action.

The nature of the transcendental mode of thought consists, therefore, generally in this: that, in it, that which in all other thinking, knowing, or acting escapes the consciousness, and is absolutely non-objective, is brought into consciousness, and becomes objective; in short, it consists in a continuous act of becoming an object to itself on the part of the subjective.

The transcendental art will therefore consist in a readiness to maintain one’s self continuously in this duplicity of thinking and acting.

This arrangement is preliminary, inasmuch as the principles of arrangement can be arrived at only in the science itself.

We return to the idea of science.

Transcendental philosophy has to explain how knowledge is possible at all, supposing that the subjective in it is assumed as the chief or first element.

It is not, therefore, any single part, or any particular object of knowledge, but knowledge itself, and knowledge generally, that it takes for its object.

Now all knowledge is reducible to certain original convictions or original fore-judgments; these different convictions transcendental philosophy must reduce to one original conviction; this one, from which all others are derived, is expressed in the first principle of this philosophy, and the task of finding such is no other than that of finding the absolutely certain, by which all other certainty is arrived at.

The arrangement of transcendental philosophy itself is determined by those original convictions, whose validity it asserts. Those convictions must, in the first place, be sought in the common understanding. If, therefore, we fall back upon the standpoint of the ordinary view, we find the following convictions deeply engraven in the human understanding:

A. That there not only exists outside of us a world of things independent of us, but also that our representations agree with them in such a manner that there is nothing else in the things beyond what they present to us. The necessity which prevails in our objective representations is explained by saying that the things are unalterably determined, and that, by this determination of the things, our ideas are also indirectly determined. By this first and most original conviction, the first problem of the philosophy is determined, viz.: to explain how representations can absolutely agree with objects existing altogether independently of them. Since it is upon the assumption that things are exactly as we represent them—that we certainly, therefore, know things as they are in themselves—that the possibility of all experience 163rests, (for what would experience be, and where would physics, for example, wander to, but for the supposition of the absolute identity of being and seeming?) the solution of this problem is identical with theoretical philosophy, which has to examine the possibility of experience.

B. The second equally original conviction is, that ideas which spring up in us freely and without necessity are capable of passing from the world of thought into the real world, and of arriving at objective reality.

This conviction stands in opposition to the first. According to the first, it is assumed that objects are unalterably determined, and our ideas by them; according to the other, that objects are alterable, and that, too, by the causality of ideas in us. According to the first, there takes place a transition from the real world into the world of ideas, or a determining of ideas by something objective; according to the second, a transition from the world of ideas into the real world, or a determining of the objective by a (freely produced) idea in us.

By this second conviction, a second problem is determined, viz.: how, by something merely thought, an objective is alterable, so as completely to correspond with that something thought.

Since upon this assumption the possibility of all free action rests, the solution of this problem is practical philosophy.

C. But with these two problems we find ourselves involved in a contradiction. According to B, there is demanded the dominion of thought (the ideal) over the world of sense; but how is this conceivable, if (according to A) the idea, in its origin, is already only the slave of the objective? On the other hand, if the real world is something quite independent of us, and in accordance with which, as their pattern, our ideas must shape themselves (by A), then it is inconceivable how the real world, on the other hand, can shape itself after ideas in us (by B). In a word, in the theoretical certainty we lose the practical; in the practical we lose the theoretical. It is impossible that there should be at once truth in our knowledge and reality in our volition.

This contradiction must be solved, if there is to be a philosophy at all; and the solution of this problem, or the answering of the question: How can ideas be conceived as shaping themselves according to objects, and at the same time objects as shaping themselves to ideas?—is not the first, but the highest, task of transcendental philosophy.

It is not difficult to see that this problem is not to be solved either in theoretical or in practical philosophy, but in a higher one, which is the connecting link between the two, neither theoretical nor practical, but both at once.

How at once the objective world conforms itself to ideas in us, and ideas in us conform themselves to the objective world, it is impossible to conceive, unless there exists, between the two worlds—the ideal and the real—a preëstablished harmony. But this preëstablished harmony itself is not conceivable, unless the activity, whereby the objective world is produced, is originally identical with that which displays itself in volition, and vice versa.

Now it is undoubtedly a productive activity that displays itself in volition; all free action is productive and productive only with consciousness. If, then, we suppose, since the two activities are one only in their principle, that the same activity which is productive with consciousness in free action, is productive without consciousness in the production of the world, this preëstablished harmony is a reality, and the contradiction is solved.

If we suppose that all this is really the case, then that original identity of the activity, which is busy in the production of the world, with that which displays itself in volition, will exhibit itself in the productions of the former, and these will necessarily appear as the productions of an activity at once conscious and unconscious.

Nature, as a whole, no less than in its different productions, will, of necessity, appear as a work produced with consciousness, and, at the same time, as a production 164of the blindest mechanism. It is the result of purpose, without being demonstrable as such. The philosophy of the aims of Nature, or teleology, is therefore the required point of union between theoretical and practical philosophy.

D. Hitherto, we have postulated only in general terms the identity of the unconscious activity, which has produced Nature, and the conscious activity, which exhibits itself in volition, without having decided where the principle of this activity lies—whether in Nature or in us.

Now, the system of knowledge can be regarded as complete only when it reverts to its principle. Transcendental philosophy, therefore, could be complete only when that identity—the highest solution of its whole problem—could be demonstrated in its principle, the Ego.

It is therefore postulated that, in the subjective—in the consciousness itself—that activity, at once conscious and unconscious, can be shown.

Such an activity can be no other than the æsthetic, and every work of art can be conceived only as the product of such. The ideal work of art and the real world of objects are therefore products of one and the same activity; the meeting of the two (the conscious and the unconscious) without consciousness, gives the real—with consciousness, the æsthetic world.

The objective world is only the primal, still unconscious, poetry of the mind; the universal organum of philosophy, the key-stone of its whole arch, is the philosophy of art.

1. The only immediate object of transcendental consideration is the subjective (II.); the only organ for philosophizing in this manner is the inner sense, and its object is such that, unlike that of mathematics, it can never become the object of external intuition. The object of mathematics, to be sure, exists as little outside of knowledge, as that of philosophy. The whole existence of mathematics rests on intuition; it exists, therefore, only in intuition; and this intuition itself is an external one. In addition to this, the mathematician never has to deal immediately with the intuition—the construction itself—but only with the thing constructed, which, of course, can be exhibited outwardly; whereas the philosopher looks only at the act of construction itself, which is purely an internal one.

2. Moreover, the objects of the transcendental philosopher have no existence, except in so far as they are freely produced. Nothing can compel to this production, any more than the external describing of a figure can compel one to regard it internally. Just as the existence of a mathematical figure rests on the outer sense, so the whole reality of a philosophical idea rests upon the inner sense. The whole object of this philosophy is no other than the action of Intelligence according to fixed laws. This action can be conceived only by means of a peculiar, direct, inner intuition, and this again is possible only by production. But this is not enough. In philosophizing, one is not only the object considered, but always at the same time the subject considering. To the understanding of philosophy, therefore, there are two conditions indispensable: first, that the philosopher shall be engaged in a continuous internal activity, in a continuous production of those primal actions of the intelligence; second, that he shall be engaged in continuous reflection upon the productive action;—in a word, that he shall be at once the contemplated (producing) and the contemplating.

3. By this continuous duplicity of production and intuition, that must become an object which is otherwise reflected by nothing. It cannot be shown here, but will be shown in the sequel, that this becoming-reflected on the part of the absolutely unconscious and non-objective, is possible only by an æsthetic act of the imagination. Meanwhile, so much is plain from what has already been proved, that all philosophy is productive. Philosophy, therefore, no less than art, rests upon the productive faculty, and the difference between the two, upon the different direction of the productive power. For whereas 165production in art is directed outward, in order to reflect the unconscious by products, philosophical production is directed immediately inward, in order to reflect it in intellectual intuition. The real sense by which this kind of philosophy must be grasped, is therefore the æsthetic sense, and hence it is that the philosophy of art is the true organum of philosophy (III.)

Out of the vulgar reality there are only two means of exit—poetry, which transports us into an ideal world, and philosophy, which makes the real world vanish before us. It is not plain why the sense for philosophy should be more generally diffused than that for poetry, especially among that class of men, who, whether by memory-work (nothing destroys more directly the productive) or by dead speculation (ruinous to all imaginative power), have completely lost the æsthetic organ.

4. It is unnecessary to occupy time with common-places about the sense of truth, and about utter unconcern in regard to results, although it might be asked, what other conviction can yet be sacred to him who lays hands upon the most certain of all—that there are things outside of us? We may rather take one glance more at the so-called claims of the common understanding.

The common understanding in matters of philosophy has no claims whatsoever, except those which every object of examination has, viz., to be completely explained.

It is not, therefore, any part of our business to prove that what it considers true, is true, but only to exhibit the unavoidable character of its illusions. This implies that the objective world belongs only to the necessary limitations which render self-consciousness (which is I) possible; it is enough for the common understanding, if from this view again the necessity of its view is derived.

For this purpose it is necessary, not only that the inner works of the mental activity should be laid open, and the mechanism of necessary ideas revealed, but also that it should be shown by what peculiarity of our nature it is, that what has reality only in our intuition, is reflected to us as something existing outside of us.

As natural science produces idealism out of realism, by mentalizing the laws of Nature into laws of intelligence, or super-inducing the formal upon the material (I.), so transcendental philosophy produces realism out of idealism, by materializing the laws of Nature, or introducing the material into the formal.

“God is the constant and immutable Good; the world is Good in a state of becoming, and the human soul is that in and by which the Good in the world is consummated.”—Plato.

Behmen, the subtilest thinker on Genesis since Plato, conceives that Nature fell from its original oneness by fault of Lucifer before man rose physically from its ruins; and moreover, that his present existence, being the struggle to recover from Nature’s lapse, is embarrassed with double difficulties by deflection from rectitude on his part. We think it needs no Lucifer other than mankind collectively conspiring, to account for Nature’s mishaps, or Man’s. Since, assuming man to be Nature’s ancestor, and Nature man’s ruins rather, himself is the impediment he seeks to remove; and, moreover, conceiving Nature as corresponding in large—or macrocosmically—to his intents, for whatsoever embarrassments he finds therein, himself, and none other, takes the blame. Eldest of creatures, and progenitor of all below him, personally one and imperishable in essence, it follows that if debased forms appear in Nature, it must be consequent on Man’s degeneracy prior to their genesis. And it is only as he lapses out of his integrity, by 166debasing his essence, that he impairs his original likeness, and drags it into the prone shapes of the animal kingdom—these being the effigies and vestiges of his individualized and shattered personality. Behold these upstarts of his loins, everywhere the mimics jeering at him saucily, or gaily parodying their fallen lord.

It is man alone who conceives and brings forth the beast in him, that swerves and dies; perversion of will by mis-choice being the fate that precipitates him into serpentine form, clothed in duplicity, cleft into sex,

It is but one and the same soul in him, entertaining a dialogue with himself, that is symbolized in The Serpent, Adam, and the Woman; nor need there be fabulous “Paradises Lost or Regained,” for setting in relief this serpent symbol of temptation, this Lord or Lucifer in our spiritual Eden:

“I inquired what iniquity was, and found it to be no substance, but perversion of the Will from the Supreme One towards lower things.”—St. Augustine.

Better is he who is above temptation than he who, being tempted, overcomes; since the latter but suppresses the evil inclination in his breast, which the former has not. Whoever is tempted has so far sinned as to entertain the tempting lust stirring within him, and betraying his lapse from singleness or holiness. The virtuous choose, and are virtuous by choice; while the holy, being one, are above all need of deliberating, their volitions answering spontaneously to their desires. It is the cleft personality, or other within, that confronts and seduces the Will; the Adversary and Deuce we become individually, and thus impersonate in the Snake.^[12]

One were an Œdipus to expound this serpent mythology; yet failing this, were to miss finding the keys to the mysteries of Genesis, and Nature were the chaos and abyss; since hereby the one rejoins man’s parted personality, and recreates lost mankind. Coeval with flesh, the symbol appears wherever traces of civilization exist, a remnant of it in the ancient Phallus worship having come to us disguised in our May-day dance. Nor was it confined to carnal knowledge merely. The serpent symbolized divine wisdom, also; and it was under this acceptation that it became associated with those “traditionary teachers of mankind whose genial wisdom entitled them to divine honors.” An early Christian sect, called Ophites, worshipped it as the personation of natural knowledge. So the injunction, “Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves,” becomes the more significant when we learn that seraph in the original means a serpent; cherub, a dove; these again symbolizing facts in osteological science as connected with the latest theories of the invertebrated cranium 167accepted by eminent naturalists, and so substantiating the symbol in nature; this being ophiomorphous, a series of spires, crowned, winged, webbed, finned, footed in structure, set erect, prone, trailing, as charged with life in higher potency or lower; man, supreme in personal uprightness, and holding the sceptre of dominion as he maintains his inborn rectitude, or losing his prerogative as he lapses from his integrity, thus debasing his form and parcelling his gifts away in the prone shapes distributed throughout Nature’s kingdoms; or, again, aspiring for lost supremacy, he uplifts and crowns his fallen form with forehead, countenance, speech, thereby liberating the genius from the slime of its prone periods, and restoring it to rectitude, religion, science, fellowship, the ideal arts.^[13]

“The form is in the archetype before it appears in the work, in the divine mind before it exists in the creature.”—Leibnitz.

As the male impregnates the female, so mind charges matter with form and fecundity; the spermatic world being life in transmission and body in embryo. So the egg is a genesis and seminary of forms, (the kingdoms of animated nature sleeping coiled in its yolk) and awaits the quickening magnetism that ushers them into light. Herein the human embryon unfolds in series the lineaments of all forms in the living hierarchy, to be fixed at last in its microcosm, unreeling therefrom its faculties into filamental organs, spinning so minutely the threads, “that were it physically possible to dissolve away all other members of the body, there would still remain the full and perfect figure of a man. And it is this perfect cerebro-spinal axis, this statue-like tissue of filaments, that, physically speaking, is the man.“ The mind above contains him spiritually, and reveals him physically to himself and his kind. Every creature assists in its own formation, souls being essentially creative and craving form.

“For the creature delights in the image of the Creator; and the soul of man will in a manner clasp God to herself. Having nothing mortal, she is wholly inebriated from God; for she glories in the harmony under which the human body exists.”^[14]

Man is a soul, informed by divine ideas, and bodying forth their image. His mind is the unit and measure of things visible and invisible. In him stir the creatures potentially, and through his personal volitions are conceived and brought forth in matter whatsoever he sees, touches, and treads under foot. The planet he spins.

A theosmeter—an instrument of instruments—he gathers in himself all forces, partakes in his plenitude of omniscience, being spirit’s acme, and culmination in nature. A quickening spirit and mediator between mind and matter, he conspires with all souls, with the Soul of souls, in generating the substance in which he immerses his form, and wherein he embosoms his essence. Not elemental, but fundamental, essential, he generates elements and forces, expiring while consuming, and perpetually replenishing his waste; the 168final conflagration a current fact of his existence. Does the assertion seem incredible, absurd? But science, grown luminous and transcendent, boldly declares that life to the senses is ablaze, refeeding steadily its flame from the atmosphere it kindles into life, its embers the spent remains from which rises perpetually the new-born Phœnix into regions where flame is lost in itself, and light its resolvent emblem.^[15]

“It has ever been the misfortune of the mere materialist, in his mania for matter on the one hand and dread of ideas on the other, to invert nature’s order, and thus hang the world’s picture as a man with his heels upwards.”—Cudworth.

This inverse order of thought conducts of necessity to conclusions as derogatory to himself as to Nature’s author. Assuming matter as his basis of investigation, force as father of thought, he confounds faculties with organs, life with brute substance, and must needs pile his atom atop of atom, cement cell on cell, in constructing his column, sconce mounting sconce aspiringly as it rises, till his shaft of gifts crown itself surreptitiously with the ape’s glorified effigy, as Nature’s frontispiece and head. Life’s atomy with life omitted altogether, man wanting. Not thus reads the ideal naturalist the Book of lives. But opening at spirit, and thence proceeding to ideas and finding their types in matter, life unfolds itself naturally in organs, faculties begetting forces, mind moulding things substantially, its connections and inter-dependencies appear in series and degrees as he traces the leaves, thought the key to originals, man the connexus, archetype, and classifier of things; he, straightway, leading forth abreast of himself the animated creation from the chaos,—the primeval Adam naming his mates, himself their ancestor, contemporary and survivor.

If the age of iron and brass be hard upon us, fast welding its fetters and chains about our foreheads and limbs, here, too, is the Promethean fire of thought to liberate letters, science, art, philosophy, using the new agencies let loose by the Dædalus of mechanic invention and discovery, in the service of the soul, as of the senses. Having recovered the omnipresence in nature, graded space, tunnelled the abyss, joined ocean and land by living wires, stolen the chemistry of atom and solar ray, made light our painter, the lightning our runner, thought is pushing its inquiries into the unexplored regions of man’s personality, for whose survey and service every modern instrument lends the outlay and means—facilities ample and unprecedented—new instruments for the new discoverers. Using no longer contentedly the eyes of a toiling circuitous logic, the genius takes the track of the creative thought, intuitively, cosmically, ontologically. A subtler analysis is finely disseminated, a broader synthesis accurately generalized from the materials accumulated on the mind during the centuries, the globe’s contents being gathered in from all quarters: the book of creation, newly illustrated and posted to date. The new Calculus is ours: an organon alike serviceable to naturalist and metaphysician: a Dialogic for resolving things into thoughts, matter into mind, power into personality, man into God, many into one; soul in souls seen as the creative controlling spirit, pulsating in all bodies, inspiring, animating, organizing, immanent in the atoms, circulating at centre and circumference, willing in all wills, personally embosoming all persons an unbroken synthesis of Being.

Under the head of “System of the Particular Arts,” Hegel sets forth, in this third part, the theory of each of the arts—Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music and Poetry.

Before proceeding to the division of the arts, he glances at the different styles which distinguish the different epochs of their development. He reduces them to three styles: the simple or severe, the ideal or beautiful, and the graceful.

1. At first the simple and natural style presents itself to us, but it is not the truly natural or true simplicity. That supposes a previous perfection. Primitive simplicity is gross, confused, rigid, inanimate. Art in its infancy is heavy and trifling, destitute of life and liberty, without expression, or with an exaggerated vivacity. Still harsh and rude in its commencements, it becomes by degrees master of form, and learns to unite it intimately with content. It arrives thus at a severe beauty. This style is the Beautiful in its lofty simplicity. It is restricted to reproducing a subject with its essential traits. Disdaining grace and ornament, it contents itself with the general and grand expression which springs from the subject, without the artist’s exhibiting himself and revealing his personality in it.

2. Next in order comes the beautiful style, the ideal and pure style, which holds the mean between simple expression and a marked tendency to the graceful. Its character is vitality, combined with a calm and beautiful grandeur. Grace is not wanting, but there is rather a natural carelessness, a simple complacency, than the desire to please—a beauty indifferent to the exterior charms which blossom of themselves upon the surface. Such is the ideal of the beautiful style—the style of Phidias and Homer. It is the culminating point of art.

3. But this movement is short. The ideal style passes quickly to the graceful, to the agreeable. Here appears an aim different from that of the realization of the beautiful, which pure art ought to propose to itself, to wit: the intention of pleasing, of producing an impression on the soul. Hence arise works of a style elaborate with art, and a certain seeking for external embellishments. The subject is no more the principal thing. The attention of the artist is distracted by ornaments and accessories—by the decorations, the trimmings, the simpering airs, the attitudes and graceful postures, or the vivid colors and the attractive forms, the luxury of ornaments and draperies, the learned making of verse. But the general effect remains without grandeur and without nobleness. Beautiful proportions and grand masses give place to moderate dimensions, or are masked with ornaments. The graceful style begets the style for effect, which is an exaggeration of it. The art then becomes altogether conspicuous; it calls the attention of the spectator by everything that can strike the senses. The artist surrenders to it his personal ends and his design. In this species of tête-à-tête with the public, there is betrayed through all, the desire of exhibiting his wit, of attracting admiration for his ability, his skill, his power of execution. This art—without naturalness, full of coquetry, of artifice and affectation, the opposite of the severe style which yields nothing to the public—is the style of the epochs of decadence. Frequently it has recourse to a last artifice, to the affectation of profundity and of simplicity, which is then only obscurity, a mysterious profundity which conceals an absence of ideas and a real impotence. This air of mystery, which parades itself, is in its turn, hardly better than coquetry; the principle is the same—the desire of producing an effect.

The author then passes to the Division 170of the Arts. The common method classes them according to their means of representation, and the senses to which they are addressed. Two senses only are affected by the perception of the beautiful: sight, which perceives forms and colors, and hearing, which perceives sounds. Hence the division into arts of design and musical art. Poetry, which employs speech, and addresses itself to the imagination, forms a domain apart. Without discarding this division, Hegel combines it with another more philosophical principle of classification, and one which is taken no longer from the external means of art, but from their internal relation to the very content of the ideas which it is to represent.

Art has for object the representation of the ideal. The arts ought then to be classed according to the measure in which they are more or less capable of expressing it. This gradation will have at the same time the advantage of corresponding to historic progress, and to the fundamental forms of art previously studied.

According to this principle, the arts marshal themselves, and succeed one another, to form a regular and complete system, thus:

1. First Architecture presents itself. This art, in fact, is incapable of representing an idea otherwise than in a vague, indeterminate manner. It fashions the masses of inorganic nature, according to the laws of matter and geometrical proportions; it disposes them with regularity and symmetry in such a manner as to offer to the eyes an image which is a simple reflex of the spirit, a dumb symbol of the thought. Architecture is at the same time appropriated to ends which are foreign to it: it is destined to furnish a dwelling for man and a temple for Divinity; it must shelter under its roof, in its enclosure, the other arts, and, in particular, sculpture and painting.

For these reasons architecture should, historically and logically, be placed first in the series of the arts.

2. In a higher rank is Sculpture, which already exhibits spirit under certain determinate traits. Its object, in fact, is spirit individualized, revealed by the human form and its living organism. Under this visible appearance, by the features of the countenance, and the proportions of the body, it expresses ideal beauty, divine calmness, serenity—in a word, the classic ideal.

3. Although retained in the world of visible forms, Painting offers a higher degree of spirituality. To form, it adds the different phases of visible appearance, the illusions of perspective, color, light and shades, and thereby it becomes capable, not only of reproducing the various pictures of nature, but also of expressing upon canvas the most profound sentiments of the human soul, and all the scenes of ethical life.

4. But, as an expression of sentiment, Music still surpasses painting. What it expresses is the soul itself, in its most intimate and profound relations; and this by a sensuous phenomenon, equally invisible, instantaneous, intangible—sound—sonorous vibrations, which resound in the abysses of the soul, and agitate it throughout.

5. All these arts culminate in Poetry, which includes them and surpasses them, and whose superiority is due to its mode of expression—speech. It alone is capable of expressing all ideas, all sentiments, all passions, the highest conceptions of the intelligence, and the most fugitive impressions of the soul. To it alone is given to represent an action in its complete development and in all its phases. It is the universal art—its domain is unlimited. Hence it is divided into many species, of which the principal are epic, lyric and dramatic poetry.

These five arts form the complete and organized system of the arts. Others, such as the art of gardening, dancing, engraving, etc., are only accessories, and more or less connected with the preceding. They have not the right to occupy a distinct place in a general theory; they would only introduce confusion, and disfigure the fundamental type which is peculiar to each of them.

Such is the division adopted by Hegel. He combines it, at the same time, with his 171general division of the forms of the historic development of art. Thus architecture appears to him to correspond more particularly to the symbolic type; sculpture is the classic art, par excellence; painting and music fill the category of the romantic arts. Poetry, as art universal, belongs to all epochs.

I. Architecture.—In the study of architecture, Hegel follows a purely historic method. He limits himself to describing and characterizing its principal forms in the different epochs of history. This art, in fact, lends itself to an abstract theory less than the others. There are here few principles to establish; and when we depart from generalities, we enter into the domain of mathematical laws, or into the technical applications, foreign to pure science. It remains, then, only to determine the sense and the character of its monuments, in their relation to the spirit of the people, and the epochs to which they belong. It is to this point of view that the author has devoted himself. The division which he adopts on this subject, and the manner in which he explains it, are as follows:

The object of architecture, independent of the positive design and the use to which its monuments are appropriated, is to express a general thought, by forms borrowed from inorganic nature, by masses fashioned and disposed according to the laws of geometry and mechanics. But whatever may be the ideas and the impressions which the appearance of an edifice produces, it never furnishes other than an obscure and enigmatic emblem. The thought is vaguely represented by those material forms which spirit itself does not animate.

If such is the nature of this art, it follows that, essentially symbolic, it must predominate in that first epoch of history which is distinguished by the symbolic character of its monuments. It must show itself there freer, more independent of practical utility, not subordinated to a foreign end. Its essential object ought to be to express ideas, to present emblems, to symbolize the beliefs of those peoples, incapable as they are of otherwise expressing them. It is the proper language of such an epoch—a language enigmatic and mysterious; it indicates the effort of the imagination to represent ideas, still vague. Its monuments are problems proposed to future ages, and which as yet are but imperfectly comprehended.

Such is the character of oriental architecture. There the end is valueless or accessory; the symbolic expression is the principal object. Architecture is independent, and sculpture is confounded with it.

The monuments of Greek and Roman architecture present a wholly different character. Here, the aim of utility appears clearly distinct from expression. The purpose, the design of the monument comes out in an evident manner. It is a dwelling, a shelter, a temple, etc.

Sculpture, for its part, is detached from architecture, and assigns its end to it. The image of the god, enclosed in the temple, is the principal object. The temple is only a shelter, an external attendant. Its forms are regulated according to the laws of numbers, and the proportions of a learned eurythmy; but its true ornaments are furnished to it by sculpture. Architecture ceases then to be independent and symbolic; it becomes dependent, subordinated to a positive end.

As to Christian architecture or that of the Middle Ages, it presents the union of the two preceding characteristics. It is at once devoted to a useful end, and eminently expressive or symbolic—dependent and independent. The temple is the house of God; it is devoted to the uses and ceremonies of worship, and shows throughout its design in its forms; but at the same time these symbolize admirably the Christian idea.

Thus the symbolic, classic and romantic forms, borrowed from history, and which mark the whole development of art, serve for the division and classification of the forms of architecture. This being especially the art which is exercised in the domain of matter, the essential point to be distinguished is whether the monument which is addressed to the eyes includes in itself its own meaning, or whether it is considered as a means to a foreign end, 172or finally whether, although in the service of a foreign end, it preserves its independence.

The basis of the division being thus placed, Hegel justifies it by describing the characters of the monuments belonging to these three epochs. All this descriptive part can not be analyzed: we are obliged to limit ourselves to securing a comprehension of the general features, and to noting the most remarkable points.

(a) Since the distinctive characteristic of symbolic architecture is the expression of a general thought, without other end than the representation of it, the interest in its monuments is less in their positive design than in the religious conceptions of the people, who, not having other means of expression, have embodied their thought, still vague and confused, in these gigantic masses and these colossal images. Entire nations know not how otherwise to express their religious beliefs. Hence the symbolic character of the structures of the Babylonians, the Indians and the Egyptians, of those works which absorbed the life of those peoples, and whose meaning we seek to explain to ourselves.

It is difficult to follow a regular order in the absence of chronology, when we review the multiplicity of ideas and forms which these monuments and these symbols present. Hegel thinks, nevertheless, that he is able to establish the following gradations:

In the first rank are the simplest monuments, such as seem only designed to serve as a bond of union to entire nations, or to different nations. Such gigantic structures as the tower of Belus or Babylon, upon the shores of the Euphrates, present the image of the union of the peoples before their dispersion. Community of toil and effort is the aim and the very idea of the work; it is the common work of their united efforts, the symbol of the dissolution of the primitive family and of the formation of a vaster society.

In a rank more elevated, appear the monuments of a more determined character, where is noticeable a mingling of architecture and sculpture, although they belong to the former. Such are those symbols which, in the East, represent the generative force of nature; the phallus and the lingam scattered in so great numbers throughout Phrygia and Syria, and of which India is the principal seat; in Egypt, the obelisks, which derive their symbolic significance from the rays of the sun; the Memnons, colossal statues which also represent the sun and his beneficent influence upon nature; the sphinxes, which one finds in Egypt in prodigious numbers and of astonishing size, ranged in rows in the form of avenues. These monuments, of an imposing sculpture, are grouped in masses, surrounded by walls so as to form buildings.

They present, in a striking manner, the twofold character indicated above: free from all positive design, they are, above all, symbols; afterward, sculpture is confounded with architecture. They are structures without roof, without doors, without aisles, frequently forests of colums where the eye loses itself. The eye passes over objects which are there for their own sake, designed only to strike the imagination by their colossal aspect and their enigmatic sense, not to serve as a dwelling for a god, and as a place of assemblage for his worshippers. Their order and their disposition alone preserve for them an architectural character. You walk on into the midst of those human works, mute symbols which remind you of divine things; your eyes are everywhere struck with the aspect of those forms and those extraordinary figures, of those walls besprinkled with hieroglyphics, books of stone, as it were, leaves of a mysterious book. Everything there is symbolically determined—the proportions, the distances, the number of columns, etc. The Egyptians, in particular, consecrated their lives to constructing and building these monuments, by instinct, as a swarm of bees builds its hive. This was the whole life of the people. It placed there all its thought, for it could no otherwise express it.

Nevertheless, that architecture, in one point, by its chambers and its halls, its tombs, begins to approach the following class, which exhibits a more positive design, and of which the type is a house.

173A third rank marks the transition of symbolic to classic architecture. Architecture already presents a character of utility, of conformity to an end. The monument has a precise design; it serves for a particular use taken aside from the symbolic sense. It is a temple or a tomb. Such, in the first place, is the subterranean architecture of the Indians, those vast excavations which are also temples, species of subterranean cathedrals, the caverns of Mithra, likewise filled with symbolic sculpture. But this transition is better characterized by the double architecture, (subterranean and above ground) of the Egyptians, which is connected with their worship of the dead. An individual being, who has his significance and his proper value; the dead one, distinct from his habitation which serves him only for covering and shelter, resides in the interior. The most ancient of these tombs are the pyramids, species of crystals, envelopes of stone which enclose a kernel, an invisible being, and which serve for the preservation of the bodies. In this concealed dead one, resides the significance of the monument which is subordinate to him.

Here, then, Architecture ceases to be independent. It divides itself into two elements—the end and the means; it is the means, and it is subservient to an end. Further, sculpture separates itself from it, and obtains a distinct office—that of shaping the image within, and its accessories. Here appears clearly the special design of architecture, conformity to an end; also it assumes inorganic and geometric forms, the abstract, mathematical form, which befits it in particular. The pyramid already exhibits the design of a house, the rectangular form.

(b) Classic architecture has a two-fold point of departure—symbolic architecture and necessity. The adaptation of parts to an end, in symbolic architecture, is accessory. In the house, on the contrary, all is controlled, from the first, by actual necessity and convenience. Now classic architecture proceeds both from the one and from the other principle, from necessity and from art, from the useful and from the beautiful, which it combines in the most perfect manner. Necessity produces regular forms, right angles, plane surfaces. But the end is not simply the satisfaction of a physical necessity; there is also an idea, a religious representation, a sacred image, which it has to shelter and surround, a worship, a religious ceremonial. The temple ought then, like the temple fashioned by sculpture, to spring from the creative imagination of the artist. There is necessary a dwelling for the god, fashioned by art and according to its laws.

Thus, while falling under the law of conformity to an end, and ceasing to be independent, architecture escapes from the useful and submits to the law of the beautiful; or rather, the beautiful and useful meet and combine themselves in the happiest manner. Symmetry, eurythmy, organic forms the most graceful, the most rich, and the most varied, join themselves as ornaments to the architectural forms. The two points of view are united without being confounded, and form an harmonious whole; there will be, at the same time, a useful, convenient and beautiful architecture.

What best marks the transition to Greek architecture, is the appearance of the column, which is its type. The column is a support. Therein is its useful and mechanical design; it fulfils that design in the most simple and perfect manner, because with it the power of support is reduced to its minimum of material means. From another side, in order to be adapted to its end and to beauty, it must give up its natural and primitive form. The beautiful column comes from a form borrowed from nature; but carved, shaped, it takes a regular and geometric configuration. In Egypt, human figures serve as columns; here they are replaced by caryatides. But the natural, primitive form is the tree, the trunk, the flexible stock, which bears its crown. Such, too, appears the Egyptian column; columns are seen rising from the vegetable kingdom in the stalks of the lotus and other trees; the base resembles an onion. The leaf shoots from the root, like that of a reed, and the capital presents 174the appearance of a flower. The mathematical and regular form is absent. In the Greek column, on the contrary, all is fashioned according to the mathematical laws of regularity and proportion. The beautiful column springs from a form borrowed from nature, but fashioned according to the artistic sense.

Thus the characteristic of classic architecture, as of architecture in general, is the union of beauty and utility. Its beauty consists in its regularity, and although it serves a foreign end, it constitutes a whole perfect in itself; it permits its essential aim to look forth in all its parts, and through the harmony of its relations, it transforms the useful into the beautiful.

The character of classic architecture being subordination to an end, it is that end which, without detriment to beauty, gives to the entire edifice its proper signification, and which becomes thus the principal regulator of all its parts; as it impresses itself on the whole, and determines its fundamental form. The first thing as to a work of this sort, then, is to know what is its purpose, its design. The general purpose of a Grecian temple is to hold the statue of a god. But in its exterior, the character of the temple relates to a different end, and its spirit is the life of the Greek people.

Among the Greeks, open structures, colonnades and porticoes, have as object the promenade in the open air, conversation, public life under a pure sky. Likewise the dwellings of private persons are insignificant. Among the Romans, on the contrary, whose national architecture has a more positive end in utility, appears later the luxury of private houses, palaces, villas, theatres, circuses, amphitheatres, aqueducts and fountains. But the principal edifice is that whose end is most remote from the wants of material life; it is the temple designed to serve as a shelter to a divine object, which already belongs to the fine arts—to the statue of a god.

Although devoted to a determinate end, this architecture is none the less free from it, in the sense, that it disengages itself from organic forms; it is more free even than sculpture, which is obliged to reproduce them; it invents its plan, the general configuration, and it displays in external forms all the richness of the imagination; it has no other laws than those of good taste and harmony; it labors without a direct model. Nevertheless, it works within a limited domain, that of mathematical figures, and it is subjected to the laws of mechanics. Here must be preserved, first of all, the relations between the width, the length, the height of the edifice; the exact proportions of the columns according to their thickness, the weight to be supported, the intervals, the number of columns, the style, the simplicity of the ornaments. It is this which gives to the theory of this art, and in particular of this form of architecture, the character of dryness and abstraction. But there dominates throughout, a natural eurythmy, which their perfectly accurate sense enabled the Greeks to find and fix as the measure and rule of the beautiful.

We will not follow the author in the description which he gives of the particular characteristics of architectural forms; we will omit also some other interesting details upon building in wood or in stone as the primitive type, upon the relation of the different parts of the Greek temple. In here following Vitruvius, the author has been able to add some discriminating and judicious remarks. What he says, in particular, of the column, of its proportions and of its design, of the internal unity of the different parts and of their effects as a whole, adds to what is already known a philosophical explication which satisfies the reason. We remark, especially, this passage, which sums up the general character of the Greek temple: “In general, the Greek temple presents an aspect which satisfies the vision, and, so to speak, surfeits it. Nothing is very elevated, it is regularly extended in length and breadth. The eye finds itself allured by the sense of extent, while Gothic architecture mounts even beyond measurement, and shoots upward to heaven. Besides, the ornaments are so managed that they do 175not mar the general expression of simplicity. In this, the ancients observe the most beautiful moderation.”

The connection of their architecture with the genius, the spirit, and the life of the Greek people, is indicated in the following passage: “In place of the spectacle of an assemblage united for a single end, all appears directed towards the exterior, and presents us the image of an animated promenade. There men who have leisure abandon themselves to conversations without end, wherein rule gayety and serenity. The whole expression of such a temple remains truly simple and grand in itself, but it has at the same time an air of serenity, something open and graceful.” This prepares and conducts us to another kind of architecture, which presents a striking contrast to the preceding Christian or Gothic architecture.

(c) We shall not further attempt to reproduce, even in its principal features, the description which Hegel gives, in some pages, of Romantic or Gothic architecture. The author has proposed to himself, as object, in the first place, to compare the two kinds of architecture, the Greek and the Christian, then to secure the apprehension of the relation of this form of architecture to the Christian idea. This is what constitutes the peculiar interest of this remarkable sketch, which, by its vigor and severity of design, preserves its distinctive merit when compared with all descriptions that have been made of the architecture of the Middle Ages.

Gothic architecture, according to Hegel, unites, in the first place, the opposite characters of the two preceding kinds. Notwithstanding, this union does not consist in the simple fusion of the architectural forms of the East and of Greece. Here, still more than in the Greek temple, the house furnishes the fundamental type. An architectural edifice which is the house of God, shows itself perfectly in conformity with its design and adapted to worship; but the monument is also there for its own sake, independent, absolute. Externally, the edifice ascends, shoots freely into the air.

The conformity to the end, although it presents itself to the eyes, is therefore effaced, and leaves to the whole the appearance of an independent existence. The monument has a determinate sense, and shows it; but, in its grand aspect and its sublime calm, it is lifted above all end in utility, to something infinite in itself.

If we examine the relation of this architecture to the inner spirit and the idea of Christian worship, we remark, in the first place, that the fundamental form is here the house wholly closed. Just as, in fact, the Christian spirit withdraws itself into the interior of the conscience, just so the church is an enclosure, sealed on all sides, the place of meditation and silence. “It is the place of the reflection of the soul into itself, which thus shuts itself up materially in space. On the other hand, if, in Christian meditation, the soul withdraws into itself, it is, at the same time, lifted above the finite, and this equally determines the character of the house of God. Architecture takes, then, for its independent signification, elevation towards the infinite, a character which it expresses by the proportions of its architectural forms.” These two traits, depth of self-examination and elevation of the soul towards the infinite, explain completely the Gothic architecture and its principal forms. They furnish also the essential differences between Gothic and Greek architecture.

The impression which the Christian church ought to produce in contrast with this open and serene aspect of the Greek temple, is, in the first place, the calmness of the soul which reflects into itself, then that of a sublime majesty which shoots beyond the confines of sense. Greek edifices extend horizontally; the Christian church should lift itself from the ground and shoot into the air.

The most striking characteristic which the house of God presents, in its whole and its parts, is, then, the free flight, the shooting in points formed either by broken arches or by right lines. In Greek architecture, exact proportion between support and height is everywhere observed. Here, 176on the contrary, the operation of supporting and the disposition at a right angle—the most convenient for this end—disappears or is effaced. The walls and the column shoot without marked difference between what supports and what is supported, and meet in an acute angle. Hence the acute triangle and the ogee, which form the characteristic traits of Gothic architecture.

We are not able to follow the author in the detailed explication of the different forms and the divers parts of the Gothic edifice, and of its total structure.

Ubi tres physici, ibi duo athei,—the proverb is something musty. Natural science is and always has been materialistic. The explanation is simple. There is as great antagonism between chemical research and metaphysical speculation, as there is between what

and book-keeping by double entry, and nothing is more customary than to deny what we do not understand. Of late years this scientific materialism has been making gigantic strides. Since the imposing fabric of the Hegelian philosophy proved but a house built on sands, the scales and metre have become our only gods.

Germany—mystic, metaphysical Germany—strange to say, leads the van in this crusade against all faith and all idealism. Vogt, the geologist, Moleschott, the physiologist, Virchow, the greatest of all living histologists, Büchner, Tiedemann, Reuchlin, Meldeg, and many others, not only hold these opinions, but have left the seclusion of the laboratory and the clinic to enter the arena of polemics in their favor. We do not mention the French and English advocates of “positive philosophy.” Their name is Legion.

It is not our design to enter at all at large into these views, still less to dispute them, but merely to give the latest and most approved defence of a single point of their position, a point which we submit is the kernel of the whole controversy, and which we believe to be the very Achilles heel and crack in the armor of their panoply of argument—that is, the Theory of the Absolute. Demonstrate the possibility of the Absolute, and materialism is impossible; disprove it, and all other philosophies are empty nothings,—vox et præterea nihil. Here, and only here, is materialism brought face to face with metaphysics; here is the combat à l’outrance in which one or the other must perish. No one of its apostles has accepted the proffered glaive more heartily, and defended his position with more wary dexterity, than Moleschott, and it is mainly from his work, entitled Der Kreislauf des Lebens, that we illustrate the present metaphysics of materialism.

Our first question is, What is the test of truth, what sanctions a law? Until this is answered, all assertion is absurd, and until it is answered correctly, all philosophy is vain. The response of the naturalist is: “The necessary sequence of cause and effect is the prime law of the experimentalist—a law which he does not ask from revelation, but will find out for himself by observation.” The source of truth is sensation; the uniform result of manifold experience is a law. Here a double objection arises: first, that the term “a necessary sequence” presupposes a law, and begs the question at issue; and, secondly, that, this necessity unproved, such truth is nothing more than a probability, for it is impossible to be certain that our next experiment may not have quite a different result. Either this is not the road to absolute truth, or absolute truth is unattainable. The latter horn of the dilemma is at once accepted; we neither know, 177nor can know, a law to be absolute; to us, the absolute does not exist. Matter and force with their relations are there, but what we know of them is a varying quantity, is of this age or the last, of this man or that, dependent upon the extent and accuracy of empirical science; we cannot speak of what we do not know, and we know no law that conceivable experience might not contradict.

But how, objects the reader, can this be reconciled with the pure mathematics? Here seem to be laws above experience, laws admitting no exception.

The response leads us back to the origin of our notions of Space and Time, on the the former of which mathematics is founded. The supposition that they are innate ideas is of course rejected by the materialist; for he looks upon innate ideas as fables; he considers them perceptions derived positively from the senses, but they do not belong to the senses alone, nor are they perceptions merely; “they are ideas, but ideas that without the sensuous perceptions of proximity and sequence could never have arisen. Nay, more—the perception of space must precede that of time,” for it is only through the former that we can reach the latter. The plainest laws of space, those which were the earliest impressions on the tabula rasa of the infant mind, and which the hourly experience of life verifies, are called, by the mathematician, axioms, and on these simplest generalizations of our perceptions he bases the whole of his structure. Axioms, therefore, are the uniform results of experiments, the possible conditions of which are extremely limited, and the factors of which have been subjected to all these conditions.

It follows from a denial of the absolute that all existence is concrete. Indeed, we may say that the corner stone of the edifice of materialism is embraced in the terse sentence of Moleschott—all existence is existence through attributes. Existence per se (Fürsichsein) is a meaningless term, and substance apart from attribute, the ens ineffabile, is a pedantic figment and nothing more. Finally, there can be no attribute except through a relation.

Let this trilogy of existence, attribute and relation, be clearly before the mind, and the position that the positive philosophy bears to all others becomes at once luminous enough. There is no existence apart from attributes, no attributes but through relations, no relations but to other existences. To exemplify: a stone is heavy, hard, colored, perhaps bitter to the taste. Now, says the idealist, this weight, this hardness, this color, this bitterness, these are not the stone, they are merely its properties or attributes, and the stone itself is some substance behind them all, to which they adhere and which we cannot detect with our senses; further, he might add, if a moderate in his school, these attributes are independently existent, the bitterness is there when we are not tasting it, and the attribute of color, though there be no light. All this the materialist denies. To him, the attributes and nothing else constitute the stone, and these attributes have no existence apart from their relations to other objects. The bitterness exists only in relation to the organs of taste, and the color to the organs of sight, and the weight to other bodies of matter. Nothing, in short, can be said to exist to us that is not cognizable by our senses. But, objects some one, there may be an existence which is not to us, which is as much beyond our ken as color is beyond the conception of the born blind. The expression was used advisedly: no such existence can become the subject of rational language. “Does not all knowledge predicate a knower, consequently a relation of the subject to the the observer? Such a relation is an attribute. Without it, knowledge is inconceivable. Neither God nor man can raise himself above the knowledge furnished by these relations to his organs of apprehension.”

A disagreeable sequence to this logic will not fail to occur to every one. If all knowledge comes from the organs of sense, then differently formed organs must furnish very different and contradictory knowledge, and one is as likely to be correct as another. The radiate animal, who sees the world through a cornea alone, must have quite another notion of light, color, 178and relative size, from the spider whose eye is provided with lenses and a vitreous humor. Consonantly with the theory, each of these probably opposing views is equally true. This ugly dilemma is foreseen by our author, for he grants that “the knowledge of the insect, its knowledge of the action of the outer world, is altogether a different one from that of man,” but he avoids the ultimate result of this reasoning.

To sum up the views of this school: matter is eternal, force is eternal, but each is impossible without the other; what bears any relation to our senses we either know or can know; what does not, it is absurd to discuss; the highest thought is but the physical elaboration of sensations, or, to use the expression of Carl Vogt, “thought is a secretion of the brain as urine is of the kidneys. Without phosphorus there is no thought.” “And so,” concludes Moleschott, “only when thought is based on fact, only when the reason is granted no sphere of action but the historical which arises from observation, when the perception is at the same time thought, and the understanding sees with consciousness, does the contradiction between Philosophy and Science disappear.”

This, then, is the last word of materialism, this the solution it now offers us of the great problem of Life. We enter no further into its views, for all collateral questions concerning the origin of the ideas of the true, the good and the beautiful, the vital force, and the spiritual life, depend directly on the question we have above mentioned. Let the reader turn back precisely a century to the Système de la Nature, so long a boasted bulwark of the rationalistic school, and judge for himself what advance, if any, materialism has made in fortifying this, the most vital point of her structure. Let him ask himself anew whether the criticism of Hume on the law of cause and effect can in any way be met except after the example of Kant, by the assumption of the absolute idea, and we have little doubt what conclusion he will arrive at in reference to that system which, while it boasts to offer the only method of discovering truth, starts with the flat denial of all truth other than relative.

Dear H.—Yours of a recent date, requesting an epistolary criticism of “Goethe’s Faust,” has come to hand, and I hasten to assure you of a compliance of some sort. I say a compliance of some sort, for I cannot promise you a criticism. This, it seems to me, would be both too little and too much; too little if understood in the ordinary sense, as meaning a mere statement of the relation existing between the work and myself; too much if interpreted as pledging an expression of a work of the creative imagination, as a totality, in the terms of the understanding, and submitting the result to the canons of art.

The former procedure, usually called criticism, reduced to its simplest forms, amounts to this: that I, the critic, report to you, that I was amused or bored, flattered or satirized, elevated or degraded, humanized or brutalized, enlightened or mystified, pleased or displeased, by the work under consideration; and—since it depends quite as much upon my own humor, native ability, and culture acquired, which set of adjectives I may be able to report, as it does upon the work—I cannot perceive what earthly profit such a labor could be to you. For that which is clear to you may be dark to me; hence, if I report that a given work is a “perfect riddle to me,” you will only smile at my simplicity. Again, that which amuses me may bore you, for I notice that even at the theatre, some will yawn with ennui while others thrill with delight, and applaud the play. Now, if each of these should tell you how he liked the performance, the one 179would say “excellent,” and the other “miserable,” and you be none the wiser. To expect, therefore, that I intend to enter upon a labor of this kind, is to expect too little.

Besides, such an undertaking seems to me not without its peculiar danger; for it may happen that the work measures or criticises the critic, instead of the latter the former. If, for example, I should tell you that the integral and differential calculus is all fog to me—mystifies me completely—you would conclude my knowledge of mathematics to be rather imperfect, and thus use my own report of that work as a sounding-lead to ascertain the depth of my attainment. Nay, you might even go further, and regard the work as a kind of Doomsday Book, on the title page of which I had “written myself down an ass.” Now, as I am not ambitious of a memorial of this kind, especially when there is no probability that the pages in contemplation—Goethe’s Faust—will perish any sooner than the veritable Doomsday Book itself, I request you, as a special favor, not to understand of me that I propose engaging in any undertaking of this sort.^[16]

Nor are you to expect an inquiry into the quantity or quality of the author’s food, drink or raiment. For the present infantile state of analytic science refuses all aid in tracing such primary elements, so to speak, in the composition of the poem before us; and hence such an investigation would lead, at best, to very secondary and remote conclusions. Nor shall we be permitted to explore the likes and dislikes of the poet, in that fine volume of scandal, for the kindred reason that neither crucible, reagent nor retort are at hand which can be of the remotest service.

By the by, has it never occurred to you, when perusing works of the kind last referred to, what a glowing picture the pious Dean of St. Patrick’s, the saintly Swift, has bequeathed to us of their producers, when he places the great authors, the historical Gullivers of our race, in all their majesty of form, astride the public thoroughfare of a Liliputian age, and marches the inhabitants, in solid battalions, through between their legs? you recollect what he says?

Nor yet are you to expect a treat of that most delightful of all compounds, the table talk and conversation—or, to use a homely phrase, the literary dishwater retailed by the author’s scullion. To expect such, or the like, would be to expect too little.

On the other hand, to expect that I shall send you an expression, in the terms of the understanding, of a work of the creative imagination, as a totality, and submit the result to the canons of art, is to expect too much. For while I am ready, and while I intend to comply with the first part of this proposition, I am unable to fulfil the requirement of the latter part—that is, I am not able to submit the result to the canons of art. The reason for this inability it is not necessary to develop in this connection any further than merely to mention that I find it extremely inconvenient to lay my hand upon the aforementioned canons just at this time.

I must, therefore, content myself with the endeavor to summon before you the Idea which creates the poem—each act, scene and verse—so that we may see the part in its relation to the whole, and the whole in its concrete, organic articulation. If we succeed in this, then we may say that we comprehend the work—a condition precedent alike to the beneficial enjoyment and the rational judgment of the same.

In my first letter, dear friend, I endeavored to guard you against misapprehension 180as to what you might expect from me. Its substance, if memory serves me, was that I did not intend to write on Anthropology or Psychology, nor yet on street, parlor or court gossip, but simply about a work of art.

I deemed these remarks pertinent in view of the customs of the time, lest that, in my not conforming to them, you should judge me harshly without profit to yourself. With the same desire of keeping up a fair understanding with you, I must call your attention to some terms and distinctions which we shall have occasion to use, and which, unless explained, might prove shadows instead of lights along the path of our intercourse.

I confess to you that I share the (I might say) abhorrence so generally entertained by the reading public, of the use of any general terms whatsoever, and would avoid them altogether if I could only see how. But in reading the poem that we are to consider, I come upon such passages as these:

and I cannot see how we are to understand these spirits, or the poet who gave them voice, unless we attack this very general expression “The beautiful world,” here said to have been destroyed by Faust.

I am, however, somewhat reconciled to this by the example of my neighbor—a non-speculative, practical farmer—now busily engaged in harvesting his wheat. For I noticed that he first directed his attention, after cutting the grain, to collecting and tying it together in bundles; and I could not help but perceive how much this facilitated his labor, and how difficult it would have been for him to collect his wheat, grain by grain, like the sparrow of the field. Though wheat it were, and not chaff, still such a mode of handling would reduce it even below the value of chaff.

Just think of handling the wheat crop of these United States, the two hundred and twenty-five millions of bushels a year, in this manner! It is absolutely not to be thought of, and we must have recourse to agglomeration, if not to generalization. But the one gives us general masses, and the other general terms. The only thing that we can do, therefore, is, in imitation of our good neighbor of the wheat field, to handle bundles, bushels, and bags, or—what is still better, if it can be done by some daring system of intellectual elevators—whole ship loads of grain at a time, due care being taken that we tie wheat to wheat, oats to oats, barley to barley, and not promiscuously.

Now, with this example well before our minds, and the necessity mentioned, which compels us to handle—not merely the wheat crop of the United States for one year, but—whatever has been raised by the intelligence of man from the beginning of our race to the time of Goethe the poet, together with the ground on which it was raised, and the sky above—for no less than this seems to be contained in the expression “The beautiful world”—I call your attention first to the expression “form and matter,” which, when applied to works of intelligence, we must take the liberty of changing into the expression “form and content,” for since there is nothing in works of this kind that manifests gravity, it can be of no use to say so, but may be of some injury.

The next is the expression “works of art,” which sounds rather suspicious in some of its applications—sounds as if it was intended to conceal rather than reveal the worker. Now I take it that the “works of art” are the works of the intelligence, and I shall have to classify them accordingly. Another point with reference to this might as well be noticed, and that is that the old expressions “works of art” and “works of nature” do not contain, as they were intended to, all the works that present themselves to our observation—the works of science, for example. Besides, we have government, society, and religion, all of which are undoubtedly distinct from the “works of art” no less than from the “works of nature,” and to tie them up in the same bundle with either of them, seems to me to be 181like tying wheat with oats, and therefore to be avoided, as in the example before our minds. This seems to be done in the expression “works of self-conscious intelligence,” and “works of nature.”

But if we reflect upon the phrases “works of self-conscious intelligence” and “works of nature,” it becomes obvious that there must be some inaccuracy contained in them; for how can two distinct subjects have the same predicate? It would, therefore, perhaps be better to say “the works of self-conscious intelligence” and the “products of nature.”

Without further rasping and filing of old phrases, I call your attention, in the next place, to the most general term which we shall have occasion to use—“the world.”

Under this we comprehend:

I. Under the natural world we comprehend the terrestrial globe, and that part of the universe which is involved in its processes; these are:

II. Under “The Spiritual World,” the world of conscious intelligence, we comprehend:

(a) The real world contains whatever derives the end of its existence only, from self-conscious intelligence.

(b) The actual world contains whatever derives the end and the means of its existence from self-conscious intelligence.

From this it appears that we have divided the world into three large slices—the Natural, the Real, and the Actual—with gravity for one and self-determination for the other extreme, and mediation between them.

In my last, I gave you some general terms, and the sense in which I intend to use them. I also gave you a reason why I should use them, together with an illustration. But I gave you no reason why I used these and no others—or I did not advance anything to show that there are objects to which they necessarily apply. I only take it for granted that there are some objects presented to your observation and mine, that gravitate or weigh something, and others that do not. To each I have applied as nearly as I could the ordinary terms. Now this procedure, although very unphilosophical, I can justify only by reminding you of the object of these letters.

If we now listen again to the chant of the invisible choir,

it will be obvious that this can refer only to the world of mediation and self-determination, to the world of spirit, of self-conscious intelligence, for the world of gravitation is not so easily affected. But how is this—how is it that the world of self-conscious intelligence is so easily affected, is so dependent upon the individual 182man? This can be seen only by examining its genesis.

In the genesis of Spirit we have three stages—manifestation, realization, and actualization. The first of these, upon which the other two are dependent and sequent, falls in the individual man. For, in him it is that Reason manifests itself before it can realize, or embody itself in this or that political, social, or moral institution. And it is not merely necessary that it should so manifest itself in the individual; it must also realize itself in these institutions before it can actualize itself in Art, Religion, and Philosophy. For in this actualization it is absolutely dependent upon the former two stages of its genesis for a content. From this it appears that Art shows what Religion teaches, and what Philosophy comprehends; or that Art, Religion, and Philosophy have the same content. Nor is it difficult to perceive why this world of spirit or self-conscious intelligence is so dependent upon the individual man.

Again, in the sphere of manifestation and reality, this content, the self-conscious intelligence, is the self-consciousness of an individual, a nation, or an age. And art, in the sphere of actuality, is this or that work of art, this poem, that painting, or yonder piece of sculpture, with the self-consciousness of this or that individual, nation, or age, for its content. Moreover, the particularity (the individual, nation, or age) of the content constitutes the individuality of the work of Art. And not only this, but this particularity of the self-consciousness furnishes the very contradiction itself with the development and solution of which the work of art is occupied. For the self-consciousness which constitutes the content, being the self consciousness of an individual, a nation, or an age, instead of being self-conscious intelligence in its pure universality, contains in that very particularity the contradiction which, in the sphere of manifestation and reality, constitutes the collision, conflict, and solution.^[17]

Now, if we look back upon the facts stated, we have the manifestation, the realization, and the actualization of self-conscious intelligence as the three spheres or stages in the process which evolves and involves the entire activity of man, both practical and theoretical. It is also obvious that the realization of self-conscious intelligence in the family, society, and the state, and its actualization in Art, Religion, and Philosophy, depend in their genesis upon its manifestation in the individual. Hence a denial of the possibility of this manifestation is a denial of the possibility of the realization and actualization also.

Now if this denial assume the form of a conviction in the consciousness of an individual, a nation, or an age, then there results a contradiction which involves in the sweep of its universality the entire spiritual world of man. For it is the self-consciousness of that individual, nation, or age, in direct conflict with itself, not with this or that particularity of itself, but with its entire content, in the sphere of manifestation, with the receptivity for, the production of, and the aspiration after, the Beautiful, the Good, and the True, within the individual himself; in the sphere of realization with the Family, with Society, and with the State; and finally, in the sphere of actuality with Art, Religion, and Philosophy.

Now this contradiction is precisely what is presented in the proposition, “Man cannot know truth.” This you will remember was, in the history of modern thought, the result of Kant’s philosophy. And Kant’s philosophy was the philosophy of Germany at the time of the conception of Goethe’s Faust. And Goethe was the truest poet of Germany, and thus he sings:

Here, you will perceive in the first sentence of the poem, as was meet, the fundamental contradiction, the theme, or the “argument,” as it is so admirably termed by critics, is stated in its naked abstractness, just as Achilles’ wrath is the first sentence of the Iliad.

This theme, then, is nothing more nor less than the self-consciousness in contradiction with itself, in conflict with its own content. Hence, if the poem is to portray this theme, this content, in its totality, it must represent it in three spheres: first, Manifestation—Faust in conflict with himself; second, Realization—Faust in conflict with the Family, Society, and the State; thirdly, Actualization—Faust in conflict with Art, Religion, and Philosophy.

Now, my friend, please to examine the poem once more, reflect closely upon what has been said, and then tell how much of the poem can you spare, or how much is there in the poem as printed, which does not flow from or develop this theme?

In my last, dear friend, I called your attention to the theme, to the content of the poem in a general way, stating it in the very words of the poet himself. To trace the development of this theme from the abstract generality into concrete detail is the task before us.

According to the analysis, we have to consider, first of all, the sphere of Manifestation.

In this we observe the three-fold relation which the individual sustains to self-conscious intelligence, viz: Receptivity for, and production of, and aspiration for, the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Now if it is true that man cannot know truth, then it follows that he can neither receive nor produce the True. For how shall he know that whatever he may receive and produce is true, since it is specially denied that he can know it. This conclusion as conviction, however, does not affect immediately the third relation—the aspiration—nor 184quench its gnawing. And this is the first form of conflict in the individual. Let us now open the book and place it before us.

The historic origin of our theme places us in a German University, in the professor’s private studio.

It is well here to remember that it is a German University, and that the occupant of the room is a German professor. Also that it is the received opinion that the Germans are a theoretical people; by which we understand that they act from conviction, and not from instinct. Moreover, that their conviction is not a mere holiday affair, to be rehearsed, say on Sunday, and left in charge of a minister, paid for the purpose, during the balance of the week, but an actual, vital fountain of action. Hence, the conviction of such a character being given, the acts follow in logical sequence.

With this remembered, let us now listen to the self-communion of the occupant of the room.

In bitter earnest the man has honestly examined, and sought to possess himself of the intellectual patrimony of the race. In poverty, in solitude, in isolation, he has labored hopefully, earnestly; and now he casts up his account and finds—what? “That nothing can be known.” His hair is gray with more than futile endeavor, and for ten years his special calling has been to guide the students to waste their lives, as he has done his own, in seeking to accomplish the impossible—to know. This is the worm that gnaws his heart! As compensation, he is free from superstition—fears neither hell nor devil. But this sweeps with it all fond delusions, all conceit that he is able to know, and to teach something for the elevation of mankind. Nor yet does he possess honor or wealth—a dog would not lead a life like this.

Here you will perceive how the first two relations are negated by the conviction that man cannot know truth, and how, on the wings of aspiration, he sallies forth into the realm of magic, of mysticism, of subjectivity. For if reason, with its mediation, is impotent to create an object for this aspiration, let us see what emotion and imagination, without mediation, can do for subjective satisfaction.

And here all is glory, all is freedom! The imagination seizes the totality of the universe, and revels in ecstatic visions. What a spectacle! But, alas! a spectacle only! How am I to know, to comprehend the fountain of life, the centre of which articulates this totality?

See here another generalization: the practical world as a whole! Ah, that is my sphere; here I have a firm footing; here I am master; here I command spirits! Approach, and obey your master!

“Spirit. Who calls?

Faust. Terrific face!

Sp. Art thou he that called?

Thou trembling worm!

Faust. Yes; I’m he; am Faust, thy peer.

Sp. Peer of the Spirit thou comprehendest—not of me!

Faust. What! not of thee! Of whom, then? I, the image of Deity itself, and not even thy peer?“

No, indeed, Mr. Faust, thou dost not include within thyself the totality of the practical world, but only that part thereof which thou dost comprehend—only thy vocation, and hark! “It knocks!”

Oh, death! I see, ’t is my vocation; indeed, “It is my famulus!”

And this, too, is merely a delusion; this great mystery of the practical world shrinks to this dimension—a bread-professorship.

It would seem so; for no theory of the practical world is possible without the ability to know truth. As individual, you may imitate the individual, as the brute his kind, and thus transmit a craft; but you cannot seize the practical world in transparent forms and present it as a harmonious totality to your fellow-man, for that would require that these transparent intellectual forms should possess objective validity—and this they have not, according to your conviction. And so it cannot be helped.

But see what a despicable thing it is to be a bread-professor!

And is this the mode of existence, this the reality, the only reality to answer the aspiration of our soul—the aspiration 185which sought to seize the universe, to kindle its inmost recesses with the light of intelligence, and thus illumine the path of life? Alas, Reason gave us error—Imagination, illusion—and the practical world, the Will, a bread-professorship! Nothing else? Yes; a bottle of laudanum!

Let us drink, and rest forever! But hold, is there nothing else, really? No emotional nature? Hark! what is that? Easter bells! The recollections of my youthful faith in a revelation! They must be examined. We cannot leave yet.

And see what a panorama, what a strange world lies embedded with those recollections. Let us see it in all its varied character and reality, on this Easter Sunday, for example.

I have endeavored before to trace the derivation of the content of the first scene of the poem, together with its character, from the abstract theme of the work. In it we saw that the fundamental conviction of Faust leaves him naked—leaves him nothing but a bare avocation, a mere craft, and the precarious recollections of his youth (when he believed in revealed truths) to answer his aspirations. These recollections arouse his emotions, and rescue him from nothingness (suicide)—they fill his soul with a content.

To see this content with all its youthful charm, we have to retrace our childhood’s steps before the gates of the city on this the Easter festival of the year—you and I being mindful, in the meantime, that the public festivals of the Church belong to the so-called external evidences of the truth of the Christian Religion.

Well, here we are in the suburbs of the city, and what do we see? First, a set of journeymen mechanics, eager for beer and brawls, interspersed with servant girls; students whose tastes run very much in the line of strong beer, biting tobacco, and the well-dressed servant girls aforesaid; citizens’ daughters, perfectly outraged at the low taste of the students who run after the servant girls, “when they might have the very best of society;” citizens dissatisfied with the new mayor of the city—“Taxes increase from day to day, and nothing is done for the welfare of the city.” A beggar is not wanting. Other citizens, who delight to speak of war and rumors of war in distant countries, in order to enjoy their own peace at home with proper contrast; also an “elderly one,” who thinks that she is quite able to furnish what the well-dressed citizens’ daughters wish for—to the great scandal of the latter, who feel justly indignant at being addressed in public by such an old witch (although, “between ourselves, she did show us our sweethearts on St. Andrew’s night”); soldiers, who sing of high-walled fortresses and proud women to be taken by storm; and, finally, farmers around the linden tree, dancing a most furious gallopade—a real Easter Sunday or Monday “before the gate”—of any city in Germany, even to this day.

And into this real world, done up in holiday attire, but not by the poet—into this paradise, this very heaven of the people, where great and small fairly yell with delight—Faust enters, assured that here he can maintain his rank as a man; “here I dare to be a man!” And, sure enough, listen to the welcome:

And here goes—a general health to the Doctor, to the man who braved the pestilence for us, and who even now, does not think it beneath him to join us in our merry-making—hurrah for the Doctor; hip, hip, &c.

And is not this something, dear friend? Just think, with honest Wagner, when he exclaims, “What emotions must crowd thy breast, O great man, while listening to such honors?” and you will also say with him:

Why, see! the father shows you to his son; every one inquires—presses, rushes to see you! The fiddle itself is hushed, the dancers stop. Where you go, they fall into lines; caps and hats fly into the air! 186But a little more, and they would fall upon their knees, as if the sacred Host passed that way!

And is not this great? Is not this the very goal of human ambition? To Wagner, dear friend, it is; for the very essence of an avocation is, and must be, “success in life.” But how does it stand with the man whose every aspiration is the True, the Good, and the Beautiful? Will a hurrah from one hundred thousand throats, all in good yelling order, assist him? No.

To Wagner it is immaterial whether he knows what he needs, provided he sees the day when the man who has been worse to the people than the very pestilence itself, receives public honors; but to Faust, to the man really in earnest—who is not satisfied when he has squared life with life, and obtained zero for a result, or who does not merely live to make a living, but demands a rational end for life, and, in default of that rational end, spurns life itself—to such a man this whole scene possesses little significance indeed. It possesses, however, some significance, even for him! For if it is indeed true that man cannot know truth—that the high aspiration of his soul has no object—then this scene demonstrates, at least, that Faust possesses power over the practical world. If he cannot know the world, he can at least swallow a considerable portion of it, and this scene demonstrates that he can exercise a great deal of choice as to the parts to be selected; do you see this conviction?

Do you see this conviction? Do you see this dog? Consider it well; what is it, think you? Do you perceive how it encircles us nearer and nearer—becomes more and more certain, and, if I mistake not, a luminous emanation of gold, of honor, of power, follows in its wake. It seems to me as if it drew soft magic rings, as future fetters, round our feet! See, the circles become smaller and smaller-’tis almost a certainty—’tis already near; come, come home with as!

The temptation here spread before us by the poet, to consider the dog “well,” is almost irresistible; but all we can say in this place, dear friend, is that if you will look upon what is properly called an avocation in civil society, eliminate from it all higher ends and motives other than the simple one of making a living—no matter with what pomp and circumstance—no doubt you will readily recognize the POODLE. But we must hasten to the studio to watch further developments, for the conflict is not as yet decided. We are still to examine the possibility of a divine revelation to man, who cannot know truth.

And for this purpose our newly acquired conviction, that we possess power over the practical world—although not as yet in a perfectly clear form before us—comfortably lodged behind the stove, where it properly belongs, we take down the original text of the New Testament in order to realize its meaning, in our own loved mother tongue. It stands written: “In the beginning was the Word.” Word? Word? Never! Meaning it ought to be! Meaning what? Meaning? No; it is Power! No; Deed! Word, meaning, power, deed—which is it? Alas, how am I to know, unless I can know truth? ’Tis even so, our youthful recollections dissolve in mist, into thin air—and nothing is left us but our newly acquired conviction, the restlessness of which during this examination has undoubtedly not escaped your attention, dear friend. (“Be quiet, there, behind the stove.” “See here, poodle, one of us two has to leave this room!”) What, then, is the whole content of this conviction, which, so long as there was the hope of a possibility of a worthy object for our aspiration, seemed so despicable? What is it that governs the practical world of finite motives, the power that adapts means to ends, regardless of a final, of an infinite end? Is it not the Understanding? and although Reason—in its search after the final end, with its perfect system of absolute means, of infinite motives and interests—begets subjective chimeras, is it not demonstrated that the understanding possesses objective validity? Nay, look upon this dog well; does it not swell into colossal proportions—is no dog at all, in fact, but the 187very power that holds absolute sway over the finite and negative—the understanding itself—Mephistopheles in proper form?

And who calls this despicable? Is it not Reason, the power that begets chimeras, and it alone? And shall we reject the real, the actual—all in fact that possesses objective validity—because, forsooth, the power of subjective chimeras declares it negative, finite, perishable? Never. “No fear, dear sir, that I’ll do this. Precisely what I have promised is the very aim of all my endeavor. Conceited fool that I was! I prized myself too highly”—claimed kin with the infinite. “I belong only in thy sphere”—the finite. “The Great Spirit scorns me. Nature is a sealed book to me; the thread of thought is severed. Knowing disgusts me. In the depths of sensuality I’ll quench the burning passion.”

Here, then, my friend, we arrive at the final result of the conflict in the first sphere of our theme—in the sphere of manifestation—that of the individual. We started with the conviction that man cannot know truth. This destroyed our spiritual endeavors, and reduced our practical avocation to an absurdity. We sought refuge in the indefinite—the mysticism of the past—and were repelled by its subjectivity. We next examined the theoretical side of the practical world, and found this likewise an impossibility and suicide—a mere blank nothingness—as the only resource. But here we were startled by our emotional nature, which unites us with our fellow-man, and seems to promise some sort of a bridge over into the infinite—certainly demands such a transition. Investigating this, therefore, with all candor, we found our fellow-men wonderfully occupied—occupied like the kitten pursuing its own tail! At the same time it became apparent that we might be quite a dog in this kitten dance, or that the activity of the understanding possessed objective validity. With this conviction fairly established, although still held in utter contempt, we examined the last resource: the possibility of a divine revelation of truth to men that cannot know truth. The result, as the mere statement of the proposition would indicate, is negative, and thus the last chance of obtaining validity for anything except the activity of the understanding vanishes utterly. But with this our contempt for the understanding likewise vanishes. For whatever our aspiration may say, it has no object to correspond to it, and is therefore merely subjective, a hallucination, a chimera, and the understanding is the highest attainable for us. Here, therefore, the subjective conflict ends, for we have attained to objectivity, and this is the highest, since there is nothing else that possesses validity for man. Nor is this by any means contemptible in itself, for it is the power over the finite world, and the net result is: That if you and I, my friend, have no reason, cannot know truth, we do have at least a stomach, a capacity for sensual enjoyment, and an understanding to administer to the same—to be its servant. This, at least, is demonstrated by the kitten dance of the whole world.

All things are necessitated; each is necessitated by the totality of conditions; hence, whatever is must be so, and under the conditions cannot be otherwise.

Remark.—This is the most exhaustive statement of the position of the “understanding.” Nothing seems more clear than this to the thinker who has advanced beyond the sensuous grade of consciousness and the stages of Perception.

But things change—something new begins and something old ceases; but, still, in each case, the first principle must apply, and the new thing—like the old—be 188so “because necessitated by the totality of conditions.”

Remark.—The reader will notice that with the conception of change there enters a second stage of mediation. First, we have simple mediation in which the ground and grounded are both real. Secondly, we have the passage of a potentiality into a reality, and vice versa. Therefore, with the consideration of change we have encountered a contradiction which becomes apparent upon further attempt to adjust the idea of necessity to it.

If the same totality of conditions necessitates both states of the thing—the new and the old—it follows that this totality of conditions is adapted to both, and hence is indifferent to either, i. e. it allows either, and hence cannot be said to necessitate one to the exclusion of the other, for it allows one to pass over into the other, thereby demonstrating that it did not restrict or confine the first to be what it was. Hence it now appears that chance or contingency participated in the state of the thing.

But the states of the thing belong to the totality, and hence when the thing changes the totality also changes, and we are forced to admit two different totalities as the conditions of the two different states of the thing.

Remark.—Here we have returned to our starting-point, and carried back our contradiction with us. In our zeal to relieve the thing from the difficulty presented—that of changing spontaneously—we have posited duality in the original totality, and pushed our change into it. But it is the same contradiction as before, and we must continue to repeat the same process forever in the foolish endeavor to go round a circle until we arrive at its end, or, what is the same, its beginning.

If it requires a different totality of conditions to render possible the change of a thing from one state to another, then if a somewhat changes the totality changes. But there is nothing outside of the totality to necessitate it, and it therefore must necessitate itself.

Thus necessity and necessitated have proved in the last analysis to be one. This, however, is necessity no longer, but spontaneity, for it begins with itself and ends with itself. (a) As necessitating it is the active determiner which of course contains the potentiality upon which it acts. Had it no potentiality it could not change. (b) As necessitated it is the potentiality plus the limit which its activity has fixed there. (c) But we have here self-determination, and thus the existence of the Universal in and for itself, which is the Ego.

Remark.—It cannot be any other mode of existence than the Ego, for that which dissolves all determinations and is the universal potentiality is only one and cannot be distinguished into modes, for it creates and destroys these. The ego can abstract all else and yet abide—it is the actus purus—its negativity annulling all determinations and finitudes, while it is directed full on itself, and is in that very act complete self-recognition. (See proof of this in Chapter IV., III., 3.)

Thus the doctrine of necessity presupposes self-determination or Freedom as the form of the Total, and necessity is only one side—the realized or determined side—of the process isolated and regarded in this state of isolation. Against this side stands the potentiality which, if isolated in like manner, is called Chance or Contingency.

The comprehension of mediation lies at the basis of the distinction of sensuous knowing from the understanding. The transition from intuition to abstract thinking is made at first unconsciously, and for this reason the one who has begun the process of mediation handles the “mental spectres” created by abstraction with the utmost naïveté, assuming for them absolute validity in the world at large. It is only 189the speculative insight that gains mastery over such abstractions, and sees the Truth. If this view could be unfolded in a popular form, it would afford a series of solvents for the thinker which are applicable to a great variety of difficult problems. For it must be remembered that the abstract categories of the understanding—such as essence and phenomenon, cause and effect, substance and attribute, force and manifestation, matter and form, and the like, give rise to a series of antinomies, or contradictory propositions, when applied to the Totality. From the standpoint of mediation—that of simple reflection, “common sense” so called—these antinomies seem utterly insoluble. The reason of this is found in the fact that “common sense” places implicit faith in these categories (just mentioned), and never rises to the investigation of them by themselves. To consider the validity of these categories by themselves is called a transcendental procedure, for it passes beyond the ordinary thinking which uses them without distrust.

The transcendental investigation shows that the insolubility attributed to these antinomies arises from the mistake of the thinker, who supposes the categories he employs to be exhaustive. Speculative insight begins with the perception that they are not exhaustive; that they have by a species of enchantment cast a spell upon the mind, under which every thing seems dual, and the weary seeker after Truth wanders through a realm of abstractions each of which assumes the form of a solid reality—now a giant, and now a dwarf, and now an impassible river, impenetrable forest, or thick castle wall defended by dragons.

The following questions will illustrate the character of the problems here described:

“Why deal with abstractions—why not hold fast by the concrete reality?”

(This position combats mediation under its form of abstraction.)

“Can we not know immediately by intuition those objects that philosophy strives in vain to comprehend? in short, are not God, Freedom and Immortality certain to us and yet indemonstrable?”

(This position combats mediation as involved in a system of Philosophy.)

These questions arise only in the mind that has already gone beyond the doctrine that it attempts to defend, and hence a self refutation is easily drawn out of the source from whence they originate.

(a) It will be readily granted that all knowing involves distinction. We must distinguish one object from another.

(b) But the process of distinguishing is a process that involves abstraction. For in separating this object from that, I contrast its marks, properties, attributes, with those of the other. In seizing upon one characteristic I must isolate it from all others, and this is nothing more nor less than abstraction.

(c) Therefore it is absurd to speak of knowing without abstraction, for this enters into the simplest act of perception.

(d) Nor is this a subjective defect, an “impotency of our mental structure,” as some would be ready to exclaim at this point. For it is just as evident that things themselves obtain reality only through these very characteristics. One thing preserves its distinctness from another by means of its various determinations. Without these determinations all would collapse into one, nay, even “one” would vanish, for distinction being completely gone, one-ness is not possible. This is the “Principle of Indiscernibles” enunciated by Leibnitz. Thus distinction is as necessary objectively as subjectively. The thing abstracts in order to be real. It defends itself against what lies without it by specializing itself into single properties, and thus becoming in each a mere abstraction.

(e) Moreover, besides this prevalence of abstraction in the theoretic field, it is still more remarkable in the practical world. The business man decries abstractions. He does not know that every act of the will is an abstraction, and that it is also preceded by an abstraction. When he exhorts you to “leave off abstractions and deal with concrete realities,” he does this: (1.) he regards you as he thinks you are; (2.) 190he conceives you as different, i. e. as a practical man; (3.) he exhorts you to change from your real state to the possible one which he conceives of (through the process of abstraction). The simplest act with design—that of going to dinner, for example—involves abstraction. If I raise my arm on purpose, I first abstract from its real position, and think it under another condition.

(f) But the chief point in all this is to mark how the mind frees itself from the untruth of abstraction. For it must be allowed that all abstractions are false. The isolation of that which is not sufficient for its own existence, (though as we have seen, a necessary constituent of the process of knowing and of existing,) sets up an untruth as existent. Therefore the mind thinks this isolation only as a moment of a negative unity, (i. e. as an element of a process). This leads us to the consideration of mediation in the more general form, involved by the second question.

(a) Definition.—“Immediate” is a predicate applied to what is directly through itself. The immediateness of anything is the phase that first presents itself. It is the undeveloped—an oak taken immediately is an acorn; man taken immediately is a child at birth.

(b) Definition.—“Mediation” signifies the process of realization. A mediate or mediated somewhat is what it is through another, or through a process.

(c) Principle.—Any concrete somewhat exists through its relations to all else in the universe; hence all concrete somewhats are mediated. “If a grain of sand were destroyed the universe would collapse.”

(d) Principle.—An absolutely immediate somewhat would be a pure nothing, for the reason that no determination could belong to it, (for determination is negative, and hence mediation). Hence all immediateness must be phenomenal, or the result of abstraction from the concrete whole, and this, of course, exhibits the contradiction of an immediate which is mediated (a “result.”)

(e) The solution of this contradiction is found in “self-determination,” (as we have seen in former chapters). The self-determined is a mediated; it is through the process of determination; but is likewise an immediate, for it is its own mediation, and hence it is the beginning and end—it begins with its result, and ends in its beginning, and thus it is a circular process.

This is the great aperçu of all speculative philosophy.

(f) Definition.—Truth is the form of the Total, or that which actually exists.

(g) Hence a knowing of Truth must be a knowing of the self-determined, which is both immediate and mediate. This is a process or system. Therefore the knowing of it cannot be simply immediate, but must be in the form of a system. Thus the so-called “immediate intuition” is not a knowing of truth unless inconsistent with what it professes.

[The following letter from Dr. Franz Hoffmann to the St. Louis Philosophical Society has been handed us for publication. It gives us pleasure to lay before our readers so able a presentation of the claims of Baader, and we trust that some of our countrymen will be led by it to investigate the original sources herein referred to.

We are requested to correct a misstatement that occurs in the first paragraph regarding the objects of the Philosophical Society. It was not founded for the special purpose of “studying German Philosophy from Kant to Hegel,” although it has many members who are occupied chiefly in that field. The Society includes among its members advocates of widely differing systems, all, however, working in the spirit of the Preamble to the Constitution, which says: “The object of this Society is to encourage the study and development of Speculative Philosophy; to foster an application of its results to Art, Science, and Religion; and to establish a philosophical basis for the professions of Law, Medicine, Divinity, Politics, Education, Art, and Literature.” We are indebted to Dr. A. Strothotte for the translation of the letter.—Editor.]

Würzburg, Dec. 28, 1866.

Mr. President: In the first number of Vol. XLIX of the “Zeitschrift für Philosophie,” published at Halle, in Prussia, edited by Fichte, Ulrici and Wirth, notice is taken of a philosophical society, organized at St. Louis, with the object of pursuing the study of German philosophy from Kant to Hegel.

This fact promises a correlation of philosophical movements between North America and Germany which is of great importance. I presume, however, that you have already been led, or that you will be led, to go back beyond Kant to the first traces of German philosophy, and proceed from Hegel to the present time.

Now, although a thorough and comprehensive 191view of Hegel’s philosophy is in the first place to be recommended, yet the other directions in the movement of thought must not be lost sight of.

In the Berlin organ of the Philosophical Society of the Hegelians—Der Gedanke—edited by Michelet, may be found, as you perhaps know, an index of the works of Hegel’s school, by Rosenkranz, whereas on the other hand the rich literature of the anti-Hegelian writers is nowhere met with in any degree of completeness. Many of them, however, are noticed in Fichte’s journal, and in the more recent works on the history of philosophy, particularly in those of Erdmann, and still more in those of Ueberweg.

Among the prominent movements in philosophical thinking, during and after the time of Hegel, the profound utterances of a great and genial teacher, Franz Baader, reach a degree of prominence, even higher than is admitted by Erdmann and Ueberweg. This may be readily perceived by referring to the dissertation on Franz Baader, by Carl Philipp Fischer, of Erlangen, and still more by having recourse to Hamberger, Lutterbeck, and to my own writings.

I take the liberty of recommending to you and to the members of the Philosophical Society of St. Louis, the study of the works of a philosopher who certainly will have a great future, although his doctrines in the progress of time may undergo modifications, reforms and further developments. If Hegel had lived longer, the influence of Baader upon him would have been greater yet than became visible during his last years. He has thrown Schelling out of his pantheism, and pressed him towards a semi-pantheism, or towards a deeper theism. The influence of Baader on the philosophers after Hegel—J. H. Fichte, Weisse, Sempler, C. Ph. Fischer and others—is much greater than is commonly admitted. Whether they agree to it or not, still it is a fact that Baader is the central constellation of the movement of the German spirit, from pantheism to a deeper ideal-realistic theism. Such a genius, whatever position may be taken with regard to him, cannot be left unnoticed, without running the risk of being left behind the times. I ask nothing for Baader, but to follow the maxim—“Try all and keep the best.” I regret that so great a distance prevents me from sending your honorable Society some of my explanatory writings, which are admitted to be clear and thorough. It may suffice if I add a copy of my prospectus; and let me here remark, that a collection of my writings, in four large volumes, will be published by Deichert, in Erlangen. The first volume, perhaps, will be ready at Easter, 1867.

Erdmann, in his elements of the history of philosophy, has treated of the doctrines of Baader, too briefly it is true, but with more justice than he has used in his former work on the history of modern philosophy, and he bears witness that his esteem of Baader increases more and more. But he evidently assigns to him a wrong position, by considering Oken and Baader as extremes, and Hegel as the mean, while Oken and Hegel are the extremes, and Baader the mean. The most important phenomenon in the school of Hegel is the Idee der Wissenschaft of Rosenkranz, (Logik und Metaphysik,) which represents Hegel in a sense not far distant from the standpoint of Baader. * * * * * * * C. H. Fischer’s Characteristics of Baader’s Theosophy speaks with high favor of him, but still I have to take several exceptions. According to my opinion, all the authors by him referred to, as Schelling, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Dauber and Baader, we must call theosophers—or call none of them so, but philosophers, in order to avoid misunderstanding. Then I do not see how Schelling can be called the “most genial philosopher of modern times,” and yet Baader the more, yea, the most profound. Finally, a want of system must be admitted, but too great importance is attributed to this. If, however, systematism could decide here, then not Schelling but Hegel is the greatest philosopher of modern times. At all events Fischer’s Memorial at the Centennial Birthday of Baader is significant, and is written with great spirit and warmth. The most important work of C. Ph. Fischer, bearing on this subject, is his elements of the system of philosophy, or Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. This is one of the most important of the works of the philosophers after Hegel and Baader. The Athenäum of Froschhammer, (Journal for Philosophy), appeared only for three years. It had to cease its publication, because on the one side the Ultramontanist party agitated against it, and on the other side it met with insufficient support. Its reissue would be desirable, but just now not practicable, for want of interest on the part of the public, although it could bear comparison with any other philosophical journal.

Here let me say, that from Baader there proceeded a strong impulse toward the revival of the study of the long-forgotten spiritual treasures of the mystics and theosophers of the middle ages, and of the time of the Reformation. From this impulse monographs have made their appearance about Scotus Erigena, Albertus Magnus—at 192least biographies of them—Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Nicholas Cusanus, Weigel, J. Böhme, Oettinger, etc. The most important of these I deem to be Scotus Erigena, by Joh. Huber, Christlieb and Kaulich; Meister Eckhart, by Bach, and J. Böhme, by J. Hamberger. Bach on Eckhart is especially instructive with respect to the connection between modern philosophy and the theosophy of Eckhart and his school, to which also Nicholas Cusanus belonged.

I presume that it will yet be discovered that Copernicus was at least acquainted with Nicholas Cusanus, if he did not even sympathize with his philosophy. The director of the observatory at Krakau, Kerlinski, is at present preparing a monograph on Copernicus, which will probably throw light on this subject. Prowe’s pamphlet on Copernicus, which I have noticed in Glaser’s journal, refers to the investigations of Kerlinski, who has recently published a beautiful edition of the works of Copernicus. As in the early ages, first in the Pythagorean school, they approached the true doctrine of the Universe, so in the middle ages it appears in the school of Eckhart, for in a certain sense, and with some restriction, Nicholas Cusanus was the precursor of Copernicus.

I beg you, my dear sir, to communicate this letter to your honorable Society: should you see fit to publish it in a journal, you are at liberty to do so.

THE JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. Vol. I. 1867. No. 4. — INTRODUCTION TO THE OUTLINES OF A SYSTEM OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY; OR, ON THE IDEA OF SPECULATIVE PHYSICS AND THE INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF A SYSTEM OF THIS SCIENCE. 1799. [Translated from the German of Schelling , by Tom Davidson .] — I. WHAT WE CALL NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IS A NECESSARY SCIENCE IN THE SYSTEM OF KNOWING. — II. SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. — III. NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IS SPECULATIVE PHYSICS. — IV. ON THE POSSIBILITY OF SPECULATIVE PHYSICS. — V. OF A SYSTEM OF SPECULATIVE PHYSICS GENERALLY. — VI. INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF THE SYSTEM OF SPECULATIVE PHYSICS. — 1. — 2. — 3. — 4. — A. — B. [24] — GENERAL REMARK. — C. — ANALYSIS OF HEGEL’S ÆSTHETICS. [Translated from the French of M. Ch. Benard , by J. A. Martling .] — A DIALOGUE ON MUSIC. By Edward Sobolewski . — SCHOPENHAUER’S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL. Translated from the German, by C. L. Bernays . — INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY. — CHAPTER VII. COMPREHENSION AND IDEA. — I. — II. — CHAPTER VIII. WHAT IS THE TRUE ACTUAL? — I. — Reality and Potentiality. — II. — Actuality. — III. — The Actual is the Rational. — IV. —“ The Form of Eternity. ” — A THOUGHT ON SHAKESPEARE. By Anna C. Brackett. — LEONARDO DA VINCI’S “LAST SUPPER,” As treated by Goethe. — COPIES GENERALLY. — COPIES OF THE SUPPER. — LATEST COPY. — COMPARISON. — PAUL JANET AND HEGEL. [65]

The Intelligence is productive in two modes—that is, either blindly and unconsciously, or freely and consciously;—unconsciously productive in external intuition, consciously in the creation of an ideal world.

Philosophy removes this distinction by assuming the unconscious activity as originally identical, and, as it were, sprung from the same root with the conscious; this identity is by it directly proved in the case of an activity at once clearly conscious and unconscious, which manifests itself in the productions of genius, indirectly, outside of consciousness, in the products of Nature, so far as in them all, the most complete fusion of the Ideal with the Real is perceived.

Since philosophy assumes the unconscious, or, as it may likewise be termed, the real activity as identical with the conscious or ideal, its tendency will originally be to bring back everywhere the real to the ideal—a process which gives birth to what is called Transcendental Philosophy. The regularity displayed in all the movements of Nature—for example, the sublime geometry which is exercised in the motions of the heavenly bodies—is not explained by saying that Nature is the most perfect geometry; but conversely, by saying that the most perfect geometry is what produces in Nature;—a mode of explanation whereby the Real itself is transported into the ideal world, and those motions are changed into intuitions, which take place only in ourselves, and to which nothing outside of us corresponds. Again, the fact that Nature, wherever it is left to itself, in every transition from a fluid to a solid state, produces, of its own accord, as it were, regular forms—which regularity, in the higher species of crystallization, namely, the organic, seems to become purpose even; or the fact that in the animal kingdom—that product of the blind forces of Nature—we see actions arise which are equal in regularity to those that take place with consciousness, and even external works of art, perfect in their kind;—all 194this is not explained by saying that it is an unconscious productivity, though in its origin akin to the conscious, whose mere reflex we see in Nature, and which, from the stand-point of the natural view, must appear as one and the same blind tendency, which exerts its influence from crystallization upwards to the highest point of organic formation (in which, on one side, through the art-tendency, it returns again to mere crystallization) only acting upon different planes.

According to this view, inasmuch as Nature is only the visible organism of our understanding, Nature can produce nothing but what shows regularity and design, and Nature is compelled to produce that. But if Nature can produce only the regular, and produces it from necessity, it follows that the origin of such regular and design-evincing products must again be capable of being proved necessary in Nature, regarded as self-existent and real, and in the relation of its forces;—that therefore, conversely, the Ideal must arise out of the Real, and admit of explanation from it.

If, now, it is the task of Transcendental Philosophy to subordinate the Real to the Ideal, it is, on the other hand, the task of Natural Philosophy to explain the Ideal by the Real. The two sciences are therefore but one science, whose two problems are distinguished by the opposite directions in which they move; moreover, as the two directions are not only equally possible, but equally necessary, the same necessity attaches to both in the system of knowing.

Natural Philosophy, as the opposite of Transcendental Philosophy, is distinguished from the latter chiefly by the fact that it posits Nature (not, indeed, in so far as it is a product, but in so far as it is at once productive and product) as the self-existent; whence it may be most briefly designated as the Spinozism of Physics. It follows naturally from this that there is no place in this science for idealistic methods of explanation, such as Transcendental Philosophy is fitted to supply, from the circumstance that for it Nature is nothing more than the organ of self-consciousness, and everything in Nature is necessary merely because it is only through the medium of such a Nature that self-consciousness can take place; this mode of explanation, however, is as meaningless in the case of physics, and of our science which occupies the same stand-point with it, as were the old teleological modes of explanation, and the introduction of a universal reference to final causes into the thereby metamorphosed science of Nature. For every idealistic mode of explanation, dragged out of its own proper sphere and applied to the explanation of Nature, degenerates into the most adventurous nonsense, examples of which are well known. The first maxim of all true natural science, viz., to explain everything by the forces of Nature, is therefore accepted in its widest extent in our science, and even extended to that region, at the limit of which all interpretation of Nature has hitherto been accustomed to stop short; for example, to those organic phenomena which seem to pre-suppose an analogy with reason. For, granted that in the actions of animals there really is something which pre-supposes such analogy, on the principle of realism, nothing further would follow than that what we call reason is a mere play of higher and necessarily unknown natural forces. For, inasmuch as all thinking is at last reducible to a producing and reproducing, there is nothing impossible in the thought that the same activity by which Nature reproduces itself anew in each successive phase, is reproductive in thought through the medium of the organism (very much in the same manner in which, through the action and play of light, Nature, which exists independently of it, is created immaterial, and, as it were, for a second time), in which circumstance it is natural that what forms the limit of our intuitive faculty, no longer falls within the sphere of our intuition itself.

Our science, as far as we have gone, is thoroughly and completely realistic; it is therefore nothing other than Physics, it is only speculative Physics; in its tendency it is exactly what the systems of the ancient physicists were, and what, in more recent times, the system of the restorer of Epicurean philosophy is, viz., Lesage’s Mechanical Physics, by which the speculative spirit in physics, after a long scientific sleep, has again, for the first time, been awakened. It cannot be shown in detail here (for the proof itself falls within the sphere of our science), that on the mechanical or atomistic basis which has been adopted by Lesage and his most successful predecessors, the idea of speculative physics is incapable of realization. For, inasmuch as the first problem of this science, that of inquiring into the absolute cause of motion (without which Nature is not in itself a finished whole), is absolutely incapable of a mechanical solution, seeing that mechanically motion results only from motion ad infinitum, there remains for the real construction of speculative physics only one way open, viz., the dynamic, which lays down that motion arises not only from motion, but even from rest; that, therefore, there is motion in the rest of Nature, and that all mechanical motion is the merely secondary and derivative motion of that which is solely primitive and original, and which wells forth from the very first factors in the construction of a nature generally (the fundamental forces).

In hereby making clear the points of difference between our undertaking and all those of a similar nature that have hitherto been attempted, we have at the same time shown the difference between speculative physics and so-called empirical physics; a difference which in the main may be reduced to this, that the former occupies itself solely and entirely with the original causes of motion in nature, that is, solely with the dynamical phenomena; the latter, on the contrary, inasmuch as it never reaches a final source of motion in nature, deals only with the secondary motions, and even with the original ones only as mechanical (and therefore likewise capable of mathematical construction). The former, in fact, aims generally at the inner spring-work and what is non-objective in Nature; the latter, on the contrary, only at the surface of Nature, and what is objective, and, so to speak, outside in it.

Inasmuch as our inquiry is directed not so much upon the phenomena of Nature as upon their final grounds, and our business is not so much to deduce the latter from the former as the former from the latter, our task is simply this: to erect a science of Nature in the strictest sense of the term; and in order to find out whether speculative physics are possible, we must know what belongs to the possibility of a doctrine of Nature viewed as science.

(a) The idea of knowing is here taken in its strictest sense, and then it is easy to see that, in this acceptation of the term, we can be said to know objects only when they are such that we see the principles of their possibility, for without this insight my whole knowledge of an object, e. g. of a machine, with whose construction I am unacquainted, is a mere seeing, that is, a mere conviction of its existence, whereas the inventor of the machine has the most perfect knowledge of it, because he is, as it were, the soul of the work, and because it preëxisted in his head before he exhibited it as a reality.

Now, it would certainly be impossible to obtain a glance into the internal construction of Nature, if an invasion of Nature were not possible through freedom. It is true that Nature acts openly and freely; its acts however are never isolated, but performed under a concurrence of a host of causes, which must first be excluded if we are to obtain a pure result. Nature must therefore be compelled to act under certain definite conditions, which either do not exist in it at all, or else exist only as modified by others.—Such an invasion of Nature we call an experiment. Every experiment is a question put to Nature, to which she is 196compelled to give a reply. But every question contains an implicit à priori judgment; every experiment that is an experiment, is a prophecy; experimenting itself is a production of phenomena. The first step, therefore, towards science, at least in the domain of physics, is taken when we ourselves begin to produce the objects of that science.

(b) We know only the self-produced; knowing, therefore, in the strictest acceptation of the term, is a pure knowing à priori. Construction by means of experiment, is, after all, an absolute self-production of the phenomena. There is no question but that much in the science of Nature may be known comparatively à priori; as, for example, in the theory of the phenomena of electricity, magnetism, and even light. There is such a simple law recurring in every phenomenon that the results of every experiment may be told beforehand; here my knowing follows immediately from a known law, without the intervention of any particular experience. But whence then does the law itself come to me? The assertion is, that all phenomena are correlated in one absolute and necessary law, from which they can all be deduced; in short, that in natural science all that we know, we know absolutely à priori. Now, that experiment never leads to such a knowing, is plainly manifest, from the fact that it can never get beyond the forces of Nature, of which itself makes use as means.

As the final causes of natural phenomena are themselves not phenomenal, we must either give up all attempt ever to arrive at a knowledge of them, or else we must altogether put them into Nature, endow Nature with them. But now, that which we put into Nature has no other value than that of a pre-supposition (hypothesis), and the science founded thereon must be equally hypothetical with the principle itself. This it would be possible to avoid only in one case, viz., if that pre-supposition itself were involuntary, and as necessary as Nature itself. Assuming, for example, what must be assumed, that the sum of phenomena is not a mere world, but of necessity a Nature—that is, that this whole is not merely a product, but at the same time productive, it follows that in this whole we can never arrive at absolute identity, inasmuch as this would bring about an absolute transition of Nature, in as far as it is productive, into Nature as product, that is, it would produce absolute rest; such wavering of Nature, therefore, between productivity and product, will, of necessity, appear as a universal duplicity of principles, whereby Nature is maintained in continual activity, and prevented from exhausting itself in its product; and universal duality as the principle of explanation of Nature will be as necessary as the idea of Nature itself.

This absolute hypothesis must carry its necessity within itself, but it must, besides this, be brought to empiric proof; for, inasmuch as all the phenomena of Nature cannot be deduced from this hypothesis as long as there is in the whole system of Nature a single phenomenon which is not necessary according to that principle, or which contradicts it, the hypothesis is thereby at once shown to be false, and from that moment ceases to have validity as an hypothesis.

By this deduction of all natural phenomena from an absolute hypothesis, our knowing is changed into a construction of Nature itself, that is, into a science of Nature à priori. If, therefore, such deduction itself is possible, a thing which can be proved only by the fact, then also a doctrine of Nature is possible as a science of Nature; a system of purely speculative physics is possible, which was the point to be proved.

Remark.—There would be no necessity for this remark, if the confusion which still prevails in regard to ideas perspicuous enough in themselves did not render some explanation with regard to them requisite.

The assertion that natural science must be able to deduce all its principles à priori, is in a measure understood to mean that natural science must dispense with all experience, and, without any intervention of experience, be able to spin all its principles out of itself—an affirmation so absurd that the very objections to it deserve pity. 197Not only do we know this or that through experience, but we originally know nothing at all except through experience, and by means of experience, and in this sense the whole of our knowledge consists of the data of experience. These data become à priori principles when we become conscious of them as necessary, and thus every datum, be its import what it may, may be raised to that dignity, inasmuch as the distinction between à priori and à posteriori data is not at all, as many people may have imagined, one originally cleaving to the data themselves, but is a distinction made solely with respect to our knowing, and the kind of our knowledge of these data, so that every datum which is merely historical for me—i. e. a datum of experience—becomes, notwithstanding, an à priori principle as soon as I arrive, whether directly or indirectly, at insight into its internal necessity. Now, however, it must in all cases be possible to recognize every natural phenomenon as absolutely necessary; for, if there is no chance in nature at all, there can likewise be no original phenomenon of Nature fortuitous; on the contrary, for the very reason that Nature is a system, there must be a necessary connection for everything that happens or comes to pass in it, in some principle embracing the whole of Nature. Insight into this internal necessity of all natural phenomena becomes, of course, still more complete, as soon as we reflect that there is no real system which is not, at the same time, an organic whole. For if, in an organic whole, all things mutually bear and support each other, then this organization must have existed as a whole previous to its parts—the whole could not have arisen from the parts, but the parts must have arisen out of the whole. It is not, therefore, WE KNOW Nature, but Nature IS, à priori, that is, everything individual in it is predetermined by the whole or by the idea of a Nature generally. But if Nature is à priori, then it must be possible to recognize it as something that is à priori, and this is really the meaning of our affirmation.

Such a science, like every other, does not deal with the hypothetical, or the merely probable, but depends upon the evident and the certain. Now, we may indeed be quite certain that every natural phenomenon, through whatever number of intermediate links, stands in connection with the last conditions of a Nature; the intermediate links themselves, however, may be unknown to us, and still lying hidden in the depths of Nature. To find out these links is the work of experimental research. Speculative physics have nothing to do but to show the need of these intermediate links;^[18] but as every new discovery throws us back upon a new ignorance, and while one knot is being loosed a new one is being tied, it is conceivable that the complete discovery of all the intermediate links in the chain of Nature, and therefore also our science itself, is an infinite task. Nothing, however, has more impeded the infinite progress of this science than the arbitrariness of the fictions by which the want of profound insight was so long doomed to be concealed. This fragmentary nature of our knowledge becomes apparent only when we separate what is merely hypothetical from the pure out-come of science, and thereupon set out to collect the fragments of the great whole of Nature again into a system. It is, therefore, conceivable that speculative physics (the soul of real experiment) has, in all time, been the mother of all great discoveries in Nature.

Hitherto the idea of speculative physics has been deduced and developed; it is another business to show how this idea must be realized and actually carried out.

The author, for this purpose, would at 198once refer to his Outlines of a System of Natural Philosophy, if he had not reason to suspect that many even of those who might consider those Outlines worthy of their attention, would come to it with certain preconceived ideas, which he has not presupposed, and which he does not desire to have pre-supposed.

The causes which may render an insight into the tendency of those Outlines difficult, are (exclusive of defects of style and arrangement) mainly, the following:

1. That many persons, misled perhaps by the word Natural Philosophy, expect to find transcendental deductions from natural phenomena, such as, in different fragments, exist elsewhere, and will regard natural philosophy generally as a part of transcendental philosophy, whereas it forms a science altogether peculiar, altogether different from, and independent of, every other.

2. That the notions of dynamical physics hitherto diffused, are very different from, and partially at variance with, those which the author lays down. I do not speak of the modes of representation which several persons, whose business is really mere experiment, have figured to themselves in this connection; for example, where they suppose it to be a dynamical explanation, when they reject a galvanic fluid, and accept instead of it certain vibrations in the metals; for these persons, as soon as they observe that they have understood nothing of the matter, will revert, of their own accord, to their previous representations, which were made for them. I speak of the modes of representation which have been put into philosophic heads by Kant, and which may be mainly reduced to this: that we see in matter nothing but the occupation of space in definite degrees, in all difference of matter, therefore, only mere difference of occupation of space (i. e. density,) in all dynamic (qualitative) changes, only mere changes in the relation of the repelling and attracting forces. Now, according to this mode of representation, all the phenomena of Nature are looked at only on their lowest plane, and the dynamical physics of these philosophers begin precisely at the point where they ought properly to leave off. It is indeed certain that the last result of every dynamical process is a changed degree of occupation of space—that is, a changed density; inasmuch, now, as the dynamical process of Nature is one, and the individual dynamical processes are only shreds of the one fundamental process—even magnetic and electric phenomena, viewed from this stand-point, will be, not actions of particular materials, but changes in the constitution of matter itself; and as this depends upon the mutual action of the fundamental forces, at last, changes in the relation of the fundamental forces themselves. We do not indeed deny that these phenomena at the extreme limit of their manifestation are changes in the relation of the principles themselves; we only deny that these changes are nothing more; on the contrary, we are convinced that this so-called dynamical principle is too superficial and defective a basis of explanation for all Nature’s phenomena, to reach the real depth and manifoldness of natural phenomena, inasmuch as by means of it, in point of fact, no qualitative change of matter as such is constructible (for change of density is only the external phenomenon of a higher change). To adduce proof of this assertion is not incumbent upon us, till, from the opposite side, that principle of explanation is shown by actual fact to exhaust Nature, and the great chasm is filled up between that kind of dynamical philosophy and the empirical attainments of physics—as, for example, in regard to the very different kinds of effects exhibited by simple substances—a thing which, let us say at once, we consider to be impossible.

We may therefore be permitted, in the room of the hitherto prevailing dynamic mode of representation, to place our own without further remark—a procedure which will no doubt clearly show wherein the latter differs from the former, and by which of the two the Doctrine of Nature may most certainly be raised to a Science of Nature.

An inquiry into the Principle of speculative physics must be preceded by inquiries into the distinction between the speculative and the empirical generally. This depends mainly upon the conviction that between empiricism and theory there is such a complete opposition that there can be no third thing in which the two may be united; that, therefore, the idea of Experimental Science is a mongrel idea, which implies no connected thought, or rather, which cannot be thought at all. What is pure empiricism is not science, and, vice versâ, what is science is not empiricism. This is not said for the purpose of at all depreciating empiricism, but is meant to exhibit it in its true and proper light. Pure empiricism, be its object what it may, is history (the absolute opposite of theory), and, conversely, history alone is empiricism.^[19]

Physics, as empiricism, are nothing but a collection of facts, of accounts of what has been observed—what has happened under natural or artificial circumstances. In what we at present designate physics, empiricism and science run riot together, and for that very reason they are neither one thing nor another.

Our aim, in view of this object, is to separate science and empiricism as soul and body, and by admitting nothing into science which is not susceptible of an à priori construction, to strip empiricism of all theory, and restore it to its original nakedness.

The opposition between empiricism and science rests therefore upon this: that the former regards its object in being—as something already prepared and accomplished; science, on the other hand, views its object in becoming, and as something that has yet to be accomplished. As science cannot set out from anything that is a product—that is, a thing—it must set out from the unconditioned; the first inquiry of speculative physics is that which relates to the unconditioned in natural science.

As this inquiry is, in the Outlines, deduced from the highest principles, the following may be regarded as merely an illustration of those inquiries:

Inasmuch as everything of which we can say that it is, is of a conditioned nature, it is only being itself that can be the unconditioned. But seeing that individual being, as a conditioned, can be thought only as a particular limitation of the productive activity (the sole and last substrate of all reality) being itself is thought as the same productive activity in its unlimitedness. For the philosophy of nature, therefore, nature is originally only productivity, and from this as its principle science must set out.

So long as we know the totality of objects only as the sum of being, this totality is a mere world—that is, a mere product for us. It would certainly be impossible in the science of Nature to rise to a higher idea than that of being, if all permanence (which is thought in the idea of being) were not deceptive, and really a continuous and uniform reproduction.

In so far as we regard the totality of objects not merely as a product, but at the same time necessarily as productive, it rises into Nature for us, and this identity of the product and the productivity, and this alone is implied, even in the ordinary use of language by the idea of Nature.

Nature as a mere product (natura naturata) we call Nature as object (with this alone all empiricism deals). Nature as productivity (natura naturans) we call Nature as subject (with this alone all theory deals).

As the object is never unconditioned, something absolutely non-objective must 200be put into Nature; this absolutely non-objective is nothing else but that original productivity of Nature. In the ordinary view it vanishes in the product: conversely in the philosophic view the product vanishes in the productivity.

Such identity of the product and the productivity in the original conception of Nature is expressed by the ordinary views of Nature as a whole, which is at once the cause and the effect of itself, and is in its duplicity (which goes through all phenomena) again identical. Furthermore, with this idea the identity of the Real and the Ideal agrees—an identity which is thought in the idea of every product of Nature, and in view of which alone the nature of art can be placed in opposition thereto. For whereas in art the idea precedes the act—the execution—in Nature idea and act are rather contemporary and one; the idea passes immediately over into the product, and cannot be separated from it.

This identity is cancelled by the empirical view, which sees in Nature only the effect (although on account of the continual wandering of empiricism into the field of science, we have, even in purely empirical physics, maxims which presuppose an idea of Nature as subject—as, for example, Nature chooses the shortest way; Nature is sparing in causes and lavish in effects); it is also cancelled by speculation, which looks only at cause in Nature.

We can say of Nature as object that it is, not of Nature as subject; for this is being or productivity.

This absolute productivity must pass over into an empirical nature. In the idea of absolute productivity, is the thought of an ideal infinity. The ideal infinity must become an empirical one.

But empirical infinity is an infinite becoming. Every infinite series is but the exhibition of an intellectual or ideal infinity. The original infinite series (the ideal of all infinite series) is that wherein our intellectual infinity evolves itself, viz., Time. The activity which sustains this series is the same as that which sustains our consciousness; consciousness, however, is continuous. Time, therefore, as the evolution of that activity, cannot be produced by composition. Now, as all other infinite series are only imitations of the originally infinite series, Time, no infinite series can be otherwise than continuous. In the original evolution the retarding agent (without which the evolution would take place with infinite rapidity) is nothing but original reflection; the necessity of reflection upon our acting in every organic phase (continued duplicity in identity) is the secret stroke of art whereby our being receives permanence.

Absolute continuity, therefore, exists only for the intuition, but not for the reflection. Intuition and reflection are opposed to each other. The infinite series is continuous for the productive intuition—interrupted and composite for the reflection. It is on this contradiction between intuition and reflection that those sophisms are based, in which the possibility of all motion is contested, and which are solved at every successive step by the productive activity. To the intuition, for example, the action of gravity takes place with perfect continuity; to the reflection, by fits and starts. Hence all the laws of mechanics, whereby that which is properly only the object of the productive intuition becomes an object of reflection, are really only laws for the reflection. Hence those fictitious notions of mechanics, the atoms of time in which gravitation acts, the law that the moment of solicitation is infinitely small, because otherwise an infinite rapidity would be produced in finite time, &c., &c. Hence, finally, the assertion that in mathematics no infinite series can really be represented as continuous, but only as advancing by fits and starts.

The whole of this inquiry into the opposition between reflection and the productivity of the intuition, serves only to enable us to deduce the general statement that in all productivity, and in productivity alone, there is absolute continuity—a statement of importance in the consideration of the whole of Nature; inasmuch, for example, as the law that in Nature there is no leap, that there is a continuity of forms in it, &c., is confined to the original 201productivity of Nature, in which certainly there must be continuity, whereas from the stand-point of reflection all things must appear disconnected and without continuity—placed beside each other, as it were; we must therefore admit that both parties are right; those, namely, who assert continuity in Nature—for example, in organic Nature—no less than those who deny it, when we take into consideration the difference of their respective stand-points; and we thereby, at the same time, arrive at the distinction between dynamical and atomistic physics; for, as will soon become apparent, the two are distinguished only by the fact that the former occupies the stand-point of intuition, the latter that of reflection.

These general principles being presupposed, we shall be able, with more certainty, to reach our aim, and make an exposition of the internal organism of our system.

(a) In the idea of becoming, we think the idea of gradualness. But an absolute productivity will exhibit itself empirically as a becoming with infinite rapidity, whereby there results nothing real for the intuition.

(Inasmuch as Nature must in reality be thought as engaged in infinite evolution, the permanence, the resting of the products of Nature—the organic ones, for instance—is not to be viewed as an absolute resting, but only as an evolution proceeding with infinitely small rapidity or with infinite tardiness. But hitherto evolution, with even finite rapidity, not to speak of infinitely small rapidity, has not been constructed.)

(b) That the evolution of Nature should take place with finite rapidity, and thus become an object of intuition, is not thinkable without an original limitation (a being limited) of the productivity.

(c) But if Nature be absolute productivity, then the ground of this limitation may lie outside of it. Nature is originally only productivity; there can, therefore, be nothing determined in this productivity (all determination is negation) and so products can never be reached by it. If products are to be reached, the productivity must pass from being undetermined to being determined—that is, it must, as pure productivity, be cancelled. If now the ground of determination of productivity lay outside of Nature, Nature would not be originally absolutely productivity. Determination, that is, negation, must certainly come into Nature; but this negation, viewed from a higher stand-point, must again be positivity.

(d) But if the ground of this limitation lies within Nature itself, then Nature ceases to be pure identity. (Nature, in so far as it is only productivity, is pure identity, and there is in it absolutely nothing capable of being distinguished. In order that anything may be distinguished in it, its identity must be cancelled—Nature must not be identity, but duplicity.)

Nature must originally be an object to itself; this change of the pure subject into a self-object is unthinkable without an original sundering in Nature itself.

This duplicity cannot therefore be further deduced physically; for, as the condition of all Nature generally, it is the principle of all physical explanation, and all physical explanation can only have for its aim the reduction of all the antitheses which appear in Nature to that original antithesis in the heart of Nature, which does not, however, itself appear. Why is there no original phenomenon of Nature without this duplicity, if in Nature all things are not mutually subject and object to each other ad infinitum, and Nature even, in its origin, at once product and productive?

(e) If Nature is originally duplicity, there must be opposite tendencies even in the original productivity of Nature. (The positive tendency must be opposed by another, which is, as it were, anti-productive—retarding production; not as the contradictory, but as the negative—the really opposite of the former.) It is only then that, in spite of its being limited, there is no passivity in Nature, when even 202that which limits it is again positive, and its original duplicity is a contest of really opposite tendencies.

(f) In order to arrive at a product, these opposite tendencies must concur. But as they are supposed equal, (for there is no ground for supposing them unequal,) wherever they meet they will annihilate each other; the product is therefore = 0, and once more no product is reached.

This inevitable, though hitherto not very closely remarked contradiction (namely, that a product can arise only through the concurrence of opposite tendencies, while at the same time these opposite tendencies mutually annihilate each other) is capable of being solved only in the following manner: There is absolutely no subsistence of a product thinkable, without a continual process of being reproduced. The product must be thought as annihilated at every step, and at every step reproduced anew. We do not really see the subsisting of a product, but only the continual process of being reproduced.

(It is of course very conceivable how the series 1-1+1-1... on to infinity is thought as equal neither to 1 nor to 0. The reason however why this series is thought as =1/2 lies deeper. There is one absolute magnitude (=1), which, though continually annihilated in this series, continually recurs, and by this recurrence produces, not itself, but the mean between itself and nothing.—Nature, as object, is that which comes to pass in such an infinite series, and is = a fraction of the original unit, to which the never cancelled duplicity supplies the numerator.)

(g) If the subsistence of the product is a continual process of being reproduced, then all persistence also is only in nature as object; in nature as subject there is only infinite activity.

The product is originally nothing but a mere point, a mere limit, and it is only from Nature’s combatting against this point that it is, so to speak, raised to a full sphere—to a product. (Suppose, for illustration, a stream; it is pure identity; where it meets resistance, there is formed a whirlpool; this whirlpool is not anything abiding, but something that every moment vanishes, and every moment springs up anew.—In Nature there is originally nothing distinguishable; all products are, so to speak, still in solution, and invisible in the universal productivity. It is only when retarding points are given, that they are thrown off and advance out of the universal identity.—At every such point the stream breaks (the productivity is annihilated), but at every step there comes a new wave which fills up the sphere).

The philosophy of nature has not to explain the productive (side) of nature; for if it does not posit this as in nature originally, it will never bring it into nature. It has to explain the permanent. But the fact that anything should become permanent in nature, can itself receive its explanation only from that contest of nature against all permanence. The products would appear as mere points, if nature did not give them extension and depth by its own pressure, and the products themselves would last only an instant, if nature did not at every instant crowd up against them.

(h) This seeming product, which is reproduced at every step, cannot be a really infinite product; for otherwise productivity would actually exhaust itself in it; in like manner it cannot be a finite product; for it is the force of the whole of nature that pours itself into it. It must therefore be at once infinite and finite; it must be only seemingly finite, but in infinite development.

The point at which this product originally comes in, is the universal point of retardation in nature, the point from which all evolution in nature begins. But in nature, as it is evolved, this point lies not here or there, but everywhere where there is a product.

This product is a finite one, but as the infinite productivity of nature concentrates itself in it, it must have a tendency to infinite development.—And thus gradually, and through all the foregoing intermediate links, we have arrived at the construction of that infinite becoming—the empirical exhibition of an ideal infinity.

203We behold in what is called nature (i. e. in this assemblage of individual objects), not the primal product itself, but its evolution, (hence the point of retardation cannot remain one.)—By what means this evolution is again absolutely retarded, which must happen, if we are to arrive at a fixed product, has not yet been explained.

But through this product an original infinity evolves itself; this infinity can never decrease. The magnitude which evolves itself in an infinite series, is still infinite at every point of the line; and thus nature will be still infinite at every point of the evolution.

There is only one original point of retardation to productivity; but any number of points of retardation to evolution may be thought. Every such point is marked for us by a product; but at every point of the evolution nature is still infinite; therefore nature is still infinite in every product, and in every one lies the germ of a universe.^[20]

(The question, by what means the infinite tendency is retarded in the product, is still unanswered. The original retardation in the productivity of nature, explains only why the evolution takes place with finite rapidity, but not why it takes place with infinitely small rapidity.)

(i) The product evolves itself ad infinitum. In this evolution, therefore, nothing can happen, which is not already a product (synthesis), and which might not divide up into new factors, each of these again having its factors.

Thus even by an analysis pursued ad infinitum, we could never arrive at anything in nature which should be absolutely simple.

(k) If however we suppose the evolution as completed, (although it never can be completed,) still the evolution could not stop at anything which was a product, but only at the purely productive.

The question arises, whether a final, such that it is no longer a substrate, but the cause of all substrate, no longer a product, but absolutely productive—we will not say occurs, for that is unthinkable, but—can at least be proved in experience.

(l) Inasmuch as it bears the character of the unconditioned, it would have to exhibit itself as something, which, although itself not in space, is still the principle of all occupation of space.

What occupies space is not matter, for matter is the occupied space itself. That, therefore, which occupies space cannot be matter. Only that which is, is in space, not being itself.

It is self-evident that no positive external intuition is possible of that which is not in space. It would therefore have to be capable of being exhibited negatively. This happens in the following manner:

That which is in space, is, as such, mechanically and chemically destructible. That which is not destructible either mechanically or chemically must therefore lie outside of space. But it is only the final ground of all quality that has anything of this nature; for although one quality may be extinguished by another, this can nevertheless only happen in a third product, C, for the formation and maintenance of which A and B, (the opposite factors of C,) must continue to act.

But this indestructible (somewhat), which is thinkable only as pure intensity, is, as the cause of all substrate, at the same time the principle of divisibility ad infinitum. (A body, divided ad infinitum still occupies space in the same degree with its smallest part.)

That, therefore, which is purely productive without being a product, is but the final ground of quality. But every quality is a determinate one, whereas productivity is originally indeterminate. In the qualities, therefore, productivity appears as already retarded, and as it appears most original in them generally, it appears in them most originally retarded.

204This is the point at which our mode of conception diverges from those of the currently so-called dynamical physics.

Our assertion, briefly stated, is this:—If the infinite evolution of nature were completed (which is impossible) it would separate up into original and simple actions, or, if we may so express ourselves, into simple productivities. Our assertion therefore is not: There are in nature such simple actions; but only, they are the ideal grounds of the explanation of quality. These entelechies cannot actually be shown, they do not exist; we have not therefore to explain here anything more than is asserted, namely, that such original productivities must be thought as the grounds of the explanation of all quality. This proof is as follows:

The affirmation that nothing which is in space, that is, that nothing at all is mechanically simple, requires no demonstration. That, therefore, which is in reality simple, cannot be thought as in space, but must be thought as outside of space. But outside of space only pure intensity is thought. This idea of pure intensity is expressed by the idea of action. It is not the product of this action that is simple, but the action itself abstracted from the product, and it must be simple in order that the product may be divisible ad infinitum. For although the parts are near vanishing, the intensity must still remain. And this pure intensity is what, even in infinite divisibility, sustains the substrate.

If, therefore, the assertion that affirms something simple as the basis of the explanation of quality is atomistic, then our philosophy is atomistic. But, inasmuch as it places the simple in something that is only productive without being a product, it is dynamical atomistics.

This much is clear, that if we admit an absolute division of nature into its factors, the last (thing) that remains over, must be something, which absolutely defies all division, that is, the simple. But the simple can be thought only as dynamical, and as such it is not in space at all (it designates only what is thought as altogether outside of space-occupation); there is therefore no intuition of it possible, except through its product. In like manner there is no measure for it given but its product. For to pure thought it is the mere origin of the product (as the point is only the origin of the line), in one word pure entelechy. But that which is known, not in itself, but only in its product, is known altogether empirically. If, therefore, every original quality, as quality (not as substrate, in which quality merely inheres), must be thought as pure intensity, pure action, then qualities generally are only the absolutely empirical in our knowledge of nature, of which no construction is possible, and in respect to which there remains nothing of the philosophy of nature, save the proof that they are the absolute limit of its construction.

The question in reference to the ground of quality posits the evolution of nature as completed, that is, it posits something merely thought, and therefore can be answered only by an ideal ground of explanation. This question adopts the stand-point of reflection (on the product), whereas genuine dynamics always remain on the stand-point of intuition.

It must here, however, be at once remarked that if the ground of the explanation of quality is conceived as an ideal one, the question only regards the explanations of quality, in so far as it is thought as absolute. There is no question, for instance, of quality, in so far as it shows itself in the dynamical process. For quality, so far as it is relative, there is certainly a [not merely ideal, but actually real] ground of explanation and determination; quality in that case is determined by its opposite, with which it is placed in conflict, and this antithesis is itself again determined by a higher antithesis, and so on back into infinity; so that, if this universal organization could dissolve itself, all matter likewise would sink back into dynamical inactivity, that is, into absolute defect of quality. (Quality is a higher power of matter, to which the latter elevates itself by reciprocity.) It is demonstrated in the sequel that the dynamical process is a limited one for each individual sphere; because it is only thereby that definite points of relation for the determination 205of quality arise. This limitation of the dynamical process, that is, the proper determination of quality, takes place by means of no force other than that by which the evolution is universally and absolutely limited, and this negative element is the only one in things that is indivisible, and mastered by nothing.—The absolute relativity of all quality may be shown from the electric relation of bodies, inasmuch as the same body that is positive with one is negative with another, and conversely. But we might now henceforth abide by the statement (which is also laid down in the Outlines): All quality is electricity, and conversely, the electricity of a body is also its quality, (for all difference of quality is equal to difference of electricity, and all [chemical] quality is reducible to electricity).—Everything that is sensible for us (sensible in the narrower acceptation of the term, as colors, taste, &c.), is doubtless sensible to us only through electricity, and the only immediately sensible (element) would then be electricity,^[21] a conclusion to which the universal duality of every sense leads us independently, inasmuch as in Nature there is properly only one duality. In galvanism, sensibility, as a reagent, reduces all quality of bodies, for which it is a reagent to an original difference. All bodies which, in a chain, at all affect the sense of taste or that of sight, be their differences ever so great, are either alkaline or acid, excite a negative or positive shock, and here they always appear as active in a higher than the merely chemical power.

Quality considered as absolute is inconstructible, because quality generally is not anything absolute, and there is no other quality at all, save that which bodies show mutually in relation to each other, and all quantity is something in virtue of which the body is, so to speak, raised above itself.

All hitherto attempted construction of quality reduces itself to the two attempts; to express qualities by figures, and so, for each original quality, to assume a particular figure in Nature; or else, to express quality by analytical formulæ (in which the forces of attraction and repulsion supply the negative and positive magnitudes.) To convince oneself of the futility of this attempt, the shortest method is to appeal to the emptiness of the explanations to which it gives rise. Hence we limit ourselves here to the single remark, that through the construction of all matter out of the two fundamental forces, different degrees of density may indeed be constructed, but certainly never different qualities as qualities; for although all dynamical (qualitative) changes appear, in their lowest stage, as changes of the fundamental forces, yet we see at that stage only the product of the process—not the process itself—and those changes are what require explanation, and the ground of explanation must therefore certainly be sought in something higher.

The only possible ground of explanation for quality is an ideal one; because this ground itself presupposes something purely ideal. If any one inquire into the final ground of quality, he transports himself back to the starting point of Nature. But where is this starting point? and does not all quality consist in this, that matter is prevented by the general concatenation from reverting into its originality?

From the point at which reflection and intuition separate, a separation, be it remarked, which is possible only on the hypothesis of the evolutions being complete, physics divide into the two opposite directions, into which the two systems, the atomistic and the dynamical, have been divided.

The dynamical system denies the absolute evolution of Nature, and passes from Nature as synthesis (i. e. Nature as subject) to Nature as evolution (i. e. Nature as object); the atomistic system passes from the evolution, as the original, to Nature as synthesis; the former passes from the stand-point of intuition to that of reflection; the latter from the stand-point of reflection to that of intuition.

206Both directions are equally possible. If the analysis only is right, then the synthesis must be capable of being found again through analysis, just as the analysis in its turn can be found through the synthesis. But whether the analysis is correct can be tested only by the fact that we can pass from it again to the synthesis. The synthesis therefore is, and continues, the absolutely presupposed.

The problems of the one system turn exactly round into those of the other; that which, in atomical physics, is the cause of the composition of Nature is, in dynamical physics, that which checks evolution. The former explains the composition of Nature by the force of cohesion, whereby, however, no continuity is ever introduced into it; the latter, on the contrary, explains cohesion by the continuity of evolution. (All cohesion is originally only in the productivity.)

Both systems set out from something purely ideal. Absolute synthesis is as much purely ideal as absolute analysis. The Real occurs only in Nature as product; but Nature is not product, either when thought as absolute involution or as absolute evolution; product is what is contained between the two extremes.

The first problem for both systems is to construct the product—i. e. that wherein those opposites become real. Both reckon with purely ideal magnitudes so long as the product is not constructed: it is only in the directions in which they accomplish this that they are opposed. Both systems, as far as they have to deal with merely ideal factors, have the same value, and the one forms the test of the other.—That which is concealed in the depths of productive Nature must be reflected as product in Nature as Nature, and thus the atomistic system must be the continual reflex of the dynamical. In the Outlines, of the two directions, that of atomistic physics has been chosen intentionally. It will contribute not a little to the understanding of our science, if we here demonstrate in the productivity what was there shown in the product.

(m) In the pure productivity of Nature there is absolutely nothing distinguishable except duality; it is only productivity dualized in itself that gives the product.

Inasmuch as the absolute productivity arrives only at producing per se, not at the producing of a determinate [somewhat], the tendency of Nature, in virtue of which product is arrived at, must be the negative of productivity.

In Nature, in so far as it is real, there can no more be productivity without a product, than a product without productivity. Nature can only approximate to the two extremes, and it must be demonstrated that it approximates to both.

(α) Pure productivity passes originally into formlessness.

Wherever Nature loses itself in formlessness, productivity exhausts itself in it. (This is what we express when we talk of a becoming latent.)—Conversely, wherever the form predominates—i. e. wherever the productivity is limited—the productivity manifests itself; it appears, not as a (representable) product, but as productivity, although passing over into one product, as in the phenomena of heat. (The idea of imponderables is only a symbolic one.)

(β) If productivity passes into formlessness, then, objectively considered, it is the absolutely formless.

The boldness of the atomical system has been very imperfectly comprehended. The idea which prevails in it, of an absolutely formless [somewhat] everywhere incapable of manifestation as determinate matter, is nothing other than the symbol of nature approximating to productivity.—The nearer to productivity the nearer to formlessness.

(γ) Productivity appears as productivity only when limits are set to it.

That which is everywhere and in everything, is, for that very reason, nowhere.—Productivity is fixed only by limitation.—Electricity exists only at that point at which limits are given, and it is only a poverty of conception that would look for anything else in its phenomena beyond the phenomena of (limited) productivity.—The condition of light is an antithesis in the electric and galvanic, as well as in the chemical, process, and even light which comes to us without our coöperation 207(the phenomenon of productivity exerted all round by the sun) presupposes that antithesis.^[22]

(δ) It is only limited productivity that gives the start to product. (The explanation of product must begin at the origination of the fixed point at which the start is made.) The condition of all formation is duality. (This is the more profound signification that lies in Kant’s construction of matter from opposite forces.)

Electrical phenomena are the general scheme for the construction of matter universally.

(ε) In Nature, neither pure productivity nor pure product can ever be arrived at.

The former is the negation of all product, the latter the negation of all productivity.

(Approximation to the former is the absolutely decomposible, to the latter the absolutely indecomposible, of the atomistics. The former cannot be thought without, at the same time, being the absolutely incomposible, the latter without, at the same time, being the absolutely composible.)

Nature will therefore originally be the middle [somewhat] arising out of the two, and thus we arrive at the idea of a productivity engaged in a transition into product, or of a product that is productive ad infinitum. We hold to the latter definition.

The idea of the product (the fixed) and that of the productive (the free) are mutually opposed.

Seeing that what we have postulated is already product, it can, if it is productive at all, be productive only in a determinate way. But determined productivity is (active) formation. That third [somewhat] must therefore be in the state of formation.

But the product is supposed to be productive ad infinitum (that transition is never absolutely to take place); it will therefore at every stage be productive in a determinate way; the productivity will remain, but not the product.

(The question might arise how a transition from form to form is possible at all here, when no form is fixed. Still, that momentary forms should be reached, has already been rendered possible by the fact that the evolution cannot take place with infinite rapidity, in which case, therefore, for every step at least, the form is certainly a determinate one.)

The product will appear as in infinite metamorphosis.

(From the stand-point of reflection, as continually on the leap from fluid to solid, without ever reaching, however, the required form.—Organizations that do not live in the grosser element, at least live on the deep ground of the aërial sea—many pass over, by metamorphoses, from one element into another; and what does the animal, whose vital functions almost all consist in contractions, appear to be, other than such a leap?)

The metamorphosis will not possibly take place without rule. For it must remain within the original antithesis, and is thereby confined within limits.^[23]

This accordance with rule will express itself solely by an internal relationship of forms—a relationship which again is not thinkable without an archetype which lies at the basis of all, and which, with however manifold divergences, they nevertheless all express.

But even with such a product, we have not that which we were in quest of—a product which, while productive ad infinitum, remains the same. That this product should remain the same seems unthinkable, because it is not thinkable without an absolute checking or suppression of the productivity.—The product would have to be checked, as the productivity was checked, for it is still productive—checked 208by dualization and limitation resulting therefrom. But it must at the same time be explained how the productive product can be checked at each individual stage of its formation, without its ceasing to be productive, or how, by dualization itself the permanence of the productivity is secured.

In this way we have brought the reader as far as the problem of the fourth section of the Outlines, and we leave him to find in it for himself the solution along with the corollaries which it brings up.—Meanwhile, we shall endeavor to indicate how the deduced product would necessarily appear from the stand-point of reflection.

The product is the synthesis wherein the opposite extremes meet, which on the one side are designated by the absolutely decomposible—on the other as indecomposible.—How continuity comes into the absolute discontinuity with which he sets out, the atomic philosopher endeavors to explain by means of cohesive, plastic power, &c., &c. In vain, for continuity is only productivity itself.

The manifoldness of the forms which such product assumes in its metamorphosis was explained by the difference in the stages of development, so that, parallel with every step of development, goes a particular form. The atomic philosopher posits in nature certain fundamental forms, and as in it everything strives after form, and every thing which does form itself has also its particular form, so the fundamental forms must be conceded, but certainly only as indicated in nature, not as actually existent.

From the standpoint of reflection, the becoming of this product must appear as a continual striving of the original actions toward the production of a determinate form, and a continual recancelling of those forms.

Thus, the product would not be product of a simple tendency; it would be only the visible expression of an internal proportion, of an internal equipoise of the original actions, which neither reduce themselves mutually to absolute formlessness, nor yet, by reason of the universal conflict, allow the production of a determinate and fixed form.

Hitherto (so long as we have had to deal merely with ideal factors), there have been opposite directions of investigation possible; from this point, inasmuch as we have to pursue a real product in its developments, there is only one direction.

(η) By the unavoidable separation of productivity into opposite directions at every single step of development the product itself is separated into individual products, by which, however, for that very reason, only different stages of development are marked.

That this is so may be shown either in the products themselves, as is done when we compare them with each other with regard to their form, and search out a continuity of formation—an idea which, from the fact that continuity is never in the products (for the reflection), but always only in the productivity, can never be perfectly realized.

In order to find continuity in productivity, the successive steps of the transition of productivity into product must be more clearly exhibited than they have hitherto been. From the fact that the productivity gets limited, (v. supra,) we have in the first instance only the start for a product, only the fixed point for the productivity generally. It must be shown how the productivity gradually materializes itself, and changes itself into products ever more and more fixed, so as to produce a dynamical scale in nature, and this is the real subject of the fundamental problem of the whole system.

In advance, the following may serve to throw light on the subject. In the first place, a dualization of the productivity is demanded; the cause through which this dualization is effected remains in the first instance altogether outside of the investigation. By dualization a change of contraction and expansion is perhaps conditioned. This change is not something in matter, but is matter itself, and the first stage of productivity passing over into product. Product cannot be reached except through a stoppage of this change, that is, through a third [somewhat] which 209fixes that change itself, and thus matter in its lowest stage—in the first power—would be an object of intuition; that change would be seen in rest, or in equipoise, just as, conversely again, by the suppression of the third [somewhat] matter might be raised to a higher power. Now it might be possible that those products just deduced stood upon quite different degrees of materiality, or of that transition, or that those different degrees were more or less distinguishable in the one than in the other; that is, a dynamical scale of those products would thereby have to be demonstrated.

(o) In the solution of the problem itself, we shall continue, in the first instance, in the direction hitherto taken, without knowing where it may lead us.

There are individual products brought into nature; but in these products productivity, as productivity, is held to be still always distinguishable. Productivity has not yet absolutely passed over into product. The subsistence of the product is supposed to be a continual self-reproduction.

The problem arises: By what is this absolute transition—exhaustion of the productivity in the product—prevented? or by what does its subsistence become a continual self-reproduction?

It is absolutely unthinkable how the activity that everywhere tends towards a product is prevented from going over into it entirely, unless that transition is prevented by external influences, and the product, if it is to subsist, is compelled at every step to reproduce itself anew.

Up to this point, however, no trace has been discovered of a cause opposed to the product (to organic nature). Such a cause can, therefore, at present, only be postulated. We thought we saw the whole of nature exhaust itself in that product, and it is only here that we remark, that in order to comprehend such product, something else must be presupposed, and a new antithesis must come into nature.

Nature has hitherto been for us absolute identity in duplicity; here we come upon an antithesis that must again take place within the other. This antithesis must be capable of being shown in the deduced product itself, if it is capable of being deduced at all.

The deduced product is an activity directed outwards; this cannot be distinguished as such without an activity directed inwards from without, (i. e. directed upon itself,) and this activity, on the other hand, cannot be thought, unless it is pressed back (reflected) from without.

In the opposite directions, which arise through this antithesis lies the principle for the construction of all the phenomena of life—on the suppression of those opposite directions, life remains over, either as absolute activity or absolute receptivity, since it is possible only as the perfect inter-determination of receptivity and activity.

We therefore refer the reader to the Outlines themselves, and merely call his attention to the higher stage of construction which we have here reached.

We have above (g) explained the origin of a product generally by a struggle of nature against the original point of check, whereby this point is raised to a full sphere, and thus receives permanence. Here, since we are deducing a struggle of external nature, not against a mere point, but against a product, the first construction rises for us to a second power, as it were,—we have a double product, and thus it might well be shown in the sequel that organic nature generally is only the higher power of the inorganic, and that it rises above the latter for the very reason that in it even that which was already product again becomes product.

Since the product, which we have deduced as the most primary, drives us to a side of nature that is opposed to it, it is clear that our construction of the origin of a product generally is incomplete, and that we have not yet, by a long way, satisfied our problem; (the problem of all science is to construct the origin of a fixed product.)

A productive product, as such, can subsist only under the influence of external forces, because it is only thereby that productivity is interrupted—prevented from being extinguished in the product. For these external forces there must now again 210be a particular sphere; those forces must lie in a world which is not productive. But that world, for this very reason, would be a world fixed and undetermined in every respect. The problem—how a product in nature is arrived at—has therefore received a one-sided solution by all that has preceded. “The product is checked by dualization of the productivity at every single step of development.” But this is true only for the productive product, whereas we are here treating of a non-productive product.

The contradiction which meets us here can be solved only by the finding of a general expression for the construction of a product generally, (regardless of whether it is productive or has ceased to be so).

Since the existence of a world, that is not productive (inorganic) is in the first instance merely postulated, in order to explain the productive one, so its conditions can be laid down only hypothetically, and as we do not in the first instance know it at all except from its opposition to the productive, those conditions likewise must be deduced only from this opposition. From this it is of course clear,—what is also referred to in the Outlines—that this second section, as well as the first, contains throughout merely hypothetical truth, since neither organic nor inorganic nature is explained without our having reduced the construction of the two to a common expression, which, however, is possible only through the synthetic part.—This must lead to the highest and most general principles for the construction of a nature generally; hence we must refer the reader who is concerned about a knowledge of our system altogether to that part. The hypothetical deduction of an inorganic world and its conditions we may pass over here all the more readily, that they are sufficiently detailed in the Outlines, and hasten to the most general and the highest problem of our science.

The most general problem of speculative physics may now be expressed thus: To reduce the construction of organic and inorganic products to a common expression.

We can state only the main principles of such a solution, and of these, for the most part, only such as have not been completely educed in the Outlines themselves—(3d principal section.)

Here at the very beginning we lay down the principle that as the organic product is the product in the second power, the ORGANIC construction of the product must be, at least, the sensuous image of the ORIGINAL construction of all product.

(a) In order that the productivity may be at all fixed at a point, limits must be given. Since limits are the condition of the first phenomenon, the cause whereby limits are produced cannot be a phenomenon, it goes back into the interior of nature, or of each respective product.

In organic nature, this limitation of productivity is shown by what we call sensibility, which must be thought as the first condition of the construction of the organic product.

(b) The immediate effect of confined productivity is a change of contraction and expansion in the matter already given, and as we now know, constructed, as it were, for the second time.

(c) Where this change stops, productivity passes over into product, and where it is again restored, product passes over into productivity. For since the product must remain productive ad infinitum, those three stages of productivity must be capable of being DISTINGUISHED in the product; the absolute transition of the latter into product is the cancelling of product itself.

(d) As these three stages are distinguishable in the individual, so they must be distinguishable in organic nature throughout, and the scale of organizations is nothing more than a scale of productivity itself. (Productivity exhausts itself to degree c in the product A, and can begin with the product B only at the point where it left off with A, that is, with degree d, and so on downwards to the vanishing of all productivity. If we knew the absolute degree of productivity of the earth for example—a degree which is determined by the earth’s 211relation to the sun—the limit of organization upon it might be thereby more accurately determined than by incomplete experience—which must be incomplete for this reason, if for no other, that the catastrophes of nature have, beyond doubt, swallowed the last links of the chain. A true system of Natural History, which has for its object not the products [of nature] but nature itself, follows up the one productivity that battles, so to speak, against freedom, through all its windings and turnings, to the point at which it is at last compelled to perish in the product.)

It is upon this dynamical scale, in the individual, as well as in the whole of organic nature, that the construction of all organic phenomena rests.

These principles, stated universally, lead to the following fundamental principles of a universal theory of nature.

(a) Productivity must be primarily limited. Since outside of limited productivity there is [only] pure identity the limitation cannot be established by a difference already existing, and therefore must be so by an opposition arising in productivity itself—an opposition to which we here revert as a first postulate.^[25]

(b) This difference thought purely is the first condition of all [natural] activity, the productivity is attracted and repelled^[26] between opposites (the primary limits); in this change of expansion and contraction there arises necessarily a common element, but one which exists only in change. If it is to exist outside of change, then the change itself must become fixed. The active in change is the productivity sundered within itself.

(c) It is asked:

(α) By what means such change can be fixed at all; it cannot be fixed by anything that is contained as a link in change itself, and must therefore be fixed by a tertium quid.

(β) But this tertium quid must be able to invade that original antithesis; but outside of that antithesis nothing is^[27]; it (that tertium quid) must therefore be primarily contained in it, as something which is mediated by the antithesis, and by which in turn the antithesis is mediated; for otherwise there is no ground why it should be primarily contained in that antithesis.

The antithesis is dissolution of identity. But nature is primarily identity. In that antithesis, therefore, there must again be a struggle after identity. This struggle is immediately conditioned through the antithesis; for if there was no antithesis, there would be identity, absolute rest, and therefore no struggle toward identity. If, on the other hand, there were not identity in the antithesis, the antithesis itself could not endure.

Identity produced out of difference is indifference; that tertium quid is therefore a struggle towards indifference—a struggle which is conditioned, by the difference itself, and by which it, on the other hand, is conditioned.—(The difference must not be looked upon as a difference at all, and is nothing for the intuition, except through a third, which sustains it—to which change itself adheres.)

This tertium quid, therefore, is all that is substrate in that primal change. But substrate posits change as much as change posits substrate; and there is here no first and no second; but difference and struggle towards indifference, are, as far time is concerned, one and contemporary.

Axiom. No identity in Nature is absolute, but all is only indifference.

Since that tertium quid itself presupposes the primary antithesis, the antithesis 212itself cannot be absolutely removed by it; the condition of the continuance of that tertium quid [of that third activity, or of Nature] is the perpetual continuance of the antithesis, just as, conversely, the continuance of the antithesis is conditioned by the continuance of the tertium quid.

But how, then, shall the antithesis be thought as continuing?

We have one primary antithesis, between the limits of which all Nature must lie; if we assume that the factors of this antithesis can really pass over into each other, or go together absolutely in some tertium quid (some individual product), then the antithesis is removed, and along with it the struggle, and so all the activity of nature. But that the antithesis should endure, is thinkable only by its being infinite—by the extreme limits being held asunder in infinitum—so that always only the mediating links of the synthesis, never the last and absolute synthesis itself, can be produced, in which case it is only relative points of indifference that are always attained, never absolute ones, and every successively originated difference leaves behind a new and still unremoved antithesis, and this again goes over into indifference, which, in its turn, partially removes the primary antithesis. Through the original antithesis and the struggle towards indifference, there arises a product, but the product partially does away with the antithesis; through the doing away of that part—that is, through the origination of the product itself—there arises a new antithesis, different from the one that has been done away with, and through it, a product different from the first; but even this leaves the absolute antithesis unremoved, duality therefore, and through it a product, will arise anew, and so on to infinity.

Let us say, for example, that by the product A, the antitheses c and d are united, the antitheses b and e still lie outside of that union. This latter is done away with in B, but this product also leaves the antithesis a and f unremoved; if we say that a and f mark the extreme limits, then the union of these will be that product which can never be arrived at.

Between the extremes a and f, lie the antitheses c and d, b and e; but the series of these intermediate antitheses is infinite; all these intermediate antitheses are included in the one absolute antithesis.—In the product A, of a only c, and of f only d is removed; let what remains of a be called b, and of f, e; these will indeed, by virtue of the absolute struggle towards indifference, become again united, but they leave a new antithesis uncancelled, and so there remains between a and f an infinite series of intermediate antitheses, and the product in which those absolutely cancel themselves never is, but only becomes.

This infinitely progressive formation must be thus represented. The original antithesis would necessarily be cancelled in the primal product A. The product would necessarily fall at the indifference-point of a and f, but inasmuch as the antithesis is an absolute one, which can be cancelled only in an infinitely continued, never actual, synthesis, A must be thought as the centre of an infinite periphery, (whose diameter is the infinite line a f.) Since in the product of a and f, only c and d are united, there arises in it the new division b and e, the product will therefore divide up into opposite directions; at the point where the struggle towards indifference attains the preponderance, b and e will combine and form a new product different from the first—but between a and f, there still lie an infinite number of antitheses; the indifference-point B is therefore the centre of a periphery which is comprehended in the first, but is itself again infinite, and so on.

The antithesis of b and e in B is maintained through A, because it (A) leaves the antithesis un-united; in like manner the antithesis in C is maintained through B, because B, in its turn, cancels only a part of a and f. But the antithesis in C is maintained through B, only in so far as A maintains the antithesis in B.^[28] What 213therefore in C and B results from this antithesis—[suppose, for example, the result of it were universal gravitation]—is occasioned by the common influence of A, so that B and C, and the infinite number of other products that come, as intermediate links between a and f, are, in relation to A, only one product.—The difference, which remains over in A after the union of c and d, is only one, into which then B, C, &c., again divide.

But the continuance of the antithesis is, in the case of every product, the condition of the struggle towards indifference, and thus a struggle towards indifference is maintained through A in B, and through B in C.—But the antithesis which A leaves uncancelled, is only one, and therefore also this tendency in B, in C, and so on to infinity, is only conditioned and maintained through A.

The organization thus determined is no other than the organization of the Universe in the system of gravitation.—Gravity is simple, but its condition is duplicity.—Indifference arises only out of difference.—The cancelled duality is matter, inasmuch as it is only mass.

The absolute indifference-point exists nowhere, but is, as it were, divided among several single points.—The Universe which forms itself from the centre towards the periphery, seeks the point at which even the extreme antitheses of nature cancel themselves; the impossibility of this cancelling guarantees the infinity of the Universe.

From every product A, the uncancelled antithesis is carried over to a new one, B, the former thereby becoming the cause of duality and gravitation for B.—(This carrying over is what is called action by distribution, the theory of which receives light only at this point.^[29])—Thus, for example, the sun, being only relative indifference, maintains, as far as its sphere of action reaches, the antithesis, which is the condition of weight upon the subordinate world-bodies.^[30]

The indifference is cancelled at every step, and at every step it is restored. Hence, weight acts upon a body at rest as well as upon one in motion.—The universal restoration of duality, and its recancelling at every step, can [that is] appear only as a nisus against a third (somewhat). This third (somewhat) is therefore the pure zero—abstracted from tendency it is nothing [= 0], therefore purely ideal, (marking only direction)—a point.^[31] Gravity [the centre of gravity] is in the case of every total product only one [for the antithesis is one], and so also the relative indifference-point is only one. The indifference-point of the individual body marks only the line of direction of its tendency towards the universal indifference-point; hence this point may be regarded as the only one at which gravity acts; just as that, whereby bodies alone attain consistence for us, is simply this tendency outwards.^[32]

Vertical falling towards this point is not a simple, but a compound motion, and it is a subject for wonder that this has not been perceived before.^[33]

Gravity is not proportional to mass (for 214what is this mass but an abstraction of the specific gravity which you have hypostatized?); but, conversely, the mass of a body is only the expression of the momentum, with which the antithesis in it cancels itself.

(d) By the foregoing, the construction of matter in general is completed, but not the construction of specific difference in matter.

That which all the matter of B, C, &c., in relation to A has common under it, is the difference which is not cancelled by A, and which again cancels itself in part in B and C—hence, therefore, the gravity mediated by that difference.

What distinguishes B and C from A therefore, is the difference which is not cancelled by A, and which becomes the condition of gravity in the case of B and C.—Similarly, what distinguishes C from B (if C is a product subordinate to B), is the difference which is not cancelled by B, and which is again carried over to C. Gravity, therefore, is not the same thing for the higher and for the subaltern world-bodies, and there is as much variety in the central forces as in the conditions of attraction.

The means whereby, in the products A, B, C, which, in so far as they are opposed to each other, represent products absolutely homogeneous [because the antithesis is the same for the whole product,] another difference of individual products is possible, is the possibility of a difference of relation between the factors in the cancelling, so that, for example, in X, the positive factor, and in Y, the negative factor, has the preponderance, (thus rendering the one body positively, and the other negatively, electric).—All difference is difference of electricity.^[34]

(e) That the identity of matter is not absolute identity, but only indifference, can be proved from the possibility of again cancelling the identity, and from the accompanying phenomena.^[35] We may be allowed, for brevity’s sake, to include this recancelling, and its resultant phenomena under the expression dynamical process, without, of course, affirming decisively whether anything of the sort is everywhere actual.

Now there will be exactly as many stages in the dynamical process as there are stages of transition from difference to indifference.

(α) The first stage will be marked by objects in which the reproduction and recancelling of the antithesis at every step is still itself an object of perception.

The whole product is reproduced anew at every step,^[36] that is, the antithesis which cancels itself in it, springs up afresh every moment; but this reproduction of difference loses itself immediately in universal gravity;^[37] this reproduction, therefore, can be perceived only in individual objects, which seem to gravitate towards each other; since, if to the one factor of an antithesis is offered its opposite (in another) both factors become heavy with reference to each other, in which case, therefore, the general gravity is not cancelled, but a special one occurs within the general.—An instance of such a mutual relation between two products, is that of the earth and the magnetic needle, in which is distinguished the continual recancelling of indifference in gravitation towards the poles^[38]—the continual sinking back into identity^[39] in gravitation towards the universal indifference-point. Here, therefore, it is not the object, but the being-reproduced of the object that becomes object.^[40]

215(β) At the first stage, in the identity of the product, its duplicity again appears; at the second, the antithesis will divide up and distribute itself among different objects (A and B). From the fact that the one factor of the antithesis attained a relative preponderance in A, the other in B, there will arise, according to the same law as in α, a gravitation of the factors toward each other, and so a new difference, which, when the relative equiponderance is restored in each, results in repulsion^[41]—(change of attraction and repulsion, second stage in which matter is seen)—electricity.

(γ) At the second stage the one factor of the product had only a relative preponderance;^[42] at the third it will attain an absolute one—by the two bodies A and B, the original antithesis is again completely represented—matter will revert to the first stage of becoming.

At the first stage there is still PURE difference, without substrate [for it was only out of it that a substrate arose]; at the second stage it is the simple factors of two products that are opposed to each other; at the third it is the PRODUCTS THEMSELVES that are opposed; here is difference in the third power.

If two products are absolutely opposed to each other,^[43] then in each of them singly indifference of gravity (by which alone each is) must be cancelled, and they must gravitate to each other.^[44] (In the second stage there was only a mutual gravitating of the factors to each other—here there is a gravitating of the products.)^[45]—This process, therefore, first assails the indifferent (element) of the PRODUCT—that is, the products themselves dissolve.

Where there is equal difference there is equal indifference; difference of products, therefore, can end only with indifference of products.—(All hitherto deduced indifference has been only indifference of substrateless, or at least simple factors.—Now we come to speak of an indifference of products.) This struggle will not cease till there exists a common product. The product, in forming itself, passes, from both sides, through all the intermediate links that lie between the two products [for example, through all the intermediate stages of specific gravity], till it finds the point at which it succumbs to indifference, and the product is fixed.

By virtue of the first construction, the product is posited as identity; this identity, it is true, again resolves itself into an antithesis, which, however, is no longer an antithesis cleaving to products, but an antithesis in the productivity itself.—The product, therefore, as product, is identity.—But even in the sphere of products, there again arises a duplicity in the second stage, and it is only in the third that even the duplicity of the products again becomes identity of the products.^[46]—There is therefore here also a progress from thesis to antithesis, and thence to synthesis.—The last synthesis of matter closes in the chemical process; if composition is to proceed yet further in it, then this circle must open again.

216We must leave it to our readers themselves to make out the conclusions to which the principles here stated lead, and the universal interdependence which is introduced by them into the phenomena of Nature.—Nevertheless, to give one instance: when in the chemical process the bond of gravity is loosed, the phenomenon of light which accompanies the chemical process in its greatest perfection (in the process of combustion), is a remarkable phenomenon, which, when followed out further, confirms what is stated in the Outlines, page 146:—“The action of light must stand in secret interdependence with the action of gravity which the central bodies exercise.”—For, is not the indifference dissolved at every step, since gravity, as ever active, presupposes a continual cancelling of indifference?—It is thus, therefore, that the sun, by the distribution exercised on the earth, causes a universal separation of matter into the primary antithesis (and hence gravity). This universal cancelling of indifference is what appears to us (who are endowed with life) as light; wherever, therefore, that indifference is dissolved (in the chemical process), there light must appear to us. According to the foregoing, it is one antithesis which, beginning at magnetism, and proceeding through electricity, at last loses itself in the chemical phenomena.^[47] In the chemical process, namely, the whole product + E or - E (the positively electric body, in the case of absolutely unburnt bodies, is always the more combustible;^[48] whereas the absolutely incombustible is the cause of all negatively electric condition;) and if we may be allowed to invert the case, what then are bodies themselves but condensed (confined) electricity? In the chemical process the whole body dissolves into + E or - E. Light is everywhere the appearing of the positive factor in the primary antithesis; hence, wherever the antithesis is restored, there is light for us, because generally only the positive factor is beheld, and the negative one is only felt.—Is the connection of the diurnal and annual deviations of the magnetic needle with light now conceivable—and, if in every chemical process the antithesis is dissolved, is it conceivable that Light is the cause and beginning of all chemical process?^[49]

217(f) The dynamical process is nothing but the second construction of matter, and however many stages there are in the dynamical process, there are the same number in the original construction of matter. This axiom is the converse of axiom e.^[50] That which, in the dynamical process is perceived in the product, takes place outside of the product with the simple factors of all duality.

The first start to original production is the limitation of productivity through the primitive antithesis, which, as antithesis (and as the condition of all construction), is distinguished only in magnetism; the second stage of production is the change of contraction and expansion, and as such becomes visible only in electricity; finally, the third stage is the transition of this change into indifference—a change which is recognized as such only in chemical phenomena.

Magnetism, Electricity and Chemical Process are the categories of the original construction of nature [matter]—the latter escapes us and lies outside of intuition, the former are what of it remains behind, what stands firm, what is fixed—the general schemes for the construction of matter.^[51]

And—in order to close the circle at the point where it began—just as in organic nature, in the scale of sensibility, irritability, and formative instinct, the secret of the production of the whole of organic nature lies in each individual, so in the scale of magnetism, electricity, and chemical process, so far as it (the scale) can be distinguished in the individual body, is to be found the secret of the production of Nature from itself [of the whole of Nature^[52]].

We have now approached nearer the solution of our problem, which was: To reduce the construction of organic and inorganic nature to a common expression.

Inorganic nature is the product of the first power, organic nature of the second^[53]—(this was demonstrated above; it will soon appear that the latter is the product of a still higher power)—hence the latter, in view of the former, appears contingent; the former, in view of the latter, necessary. Inorganic nature can take its origin from simple factors, organic nature only from products, which again become factors. Hence an inorganic nature generally will appear as having been from all eternity, the organic nature as originated.

In the organic nature, indifference can never be arrived at in the same way in which it is arrived at in inorganic nature, because life consists in nothing more than a continual prevention of the attainment of indifference [a prevention of the absolute transition of productivity into product] whereby manifestly there comes about only a condition which is, so to speak, extorted from Nature.

By organization, matter—which has already been composed for the second time by the chemical process—is once more thrown back to the initial point of formation (the circle above described is again opened); it is no wonder that matter always thrown back again into formation at last returns as a perfect product.

The same stages, through which the production of Nature originally passes, are also passed through by the production of the organic product; only that the latter, even in the first stage, at least begins with products of the simple power.—Organic production also begins with limitation, not of the primary productivity, but of the productivity of a product; organic formation also takes place through the change of expansion and contraction, just as primary formation does; but in this case it is a change taking place, not in the simple productivity, but in the compound.

But there is all this, too, in the chemical process,^[54] and yet in the chemical process indifference is attained. The vital process, therefore, must again be a higher power of the chemical; and if the scheme that lies at the base of the latter is duplicity, the scheme of the former will of necessity be triplicity [the former will be a process of the third power]. But the scheme of triplicity is [in reality] that [the fundamental scheme] of the galvanic process (Ritter’s Demonstration, &c., p. 172); therefore the galvanic process (or the process of irritation) stands a power higher than the chemical, and the third element, which the latter lacks and the former has, prevents indifference from being arrived at in the organic product.^[55]

As irritation does not allow indifference to be arrived at in the individual product, and as the antithesis is still there (for the primary antithesis still pursues us),^[56] there remains for nature no alternative but separation of the factors in different products.^[57] The formation of the individual product, 219for that very reason, cannot be a completed formation, and the product can never cease to be productive.^[58] The contradiction in Nature is this, that the product must be productive [i. e. a product of the third power], and that, notwithstanding, the product, as a product of the third power, must pass over into indifference.^[59]

This contradiction Nature tries to solve by mediating indifference itself through productivity, but even this does not succeed—for the act of productivity is only the kindling spark of a new process of irritation; the product of productivity is a new productivity. Into this as its product the productivity of the individual now indeed passes over; the individual, therefore, ceases more rapidly or slowly to be productive, and Nature reaches the indifference-point with it only after the latter has got down to a product of the second power.^[60]

And now the result of all this?—The condition of the inorganic (as well as of the organic) product, is duality. In any case, however, organic productive product is so only from the fact that the difference NEVER becomes indifference.

It is [in so far] therefore impossible to reduce the construction of organic and of inorganic product to a common expression, and the problem is incorrect, and therefore the solution impossible. The problem presupposes that organic product and inorganic product are mutually opposed, whereas the latter is only the higher power of the former, and is produced only by the higher power of the forces through which the latter also is produced. Sensibility is only the higher power of magnetism; irritability only the higher power of electricity; formative instinct only the higher power of the chemical process.—But sensibility, and irritability, and formative instinct are all only included in that one process of irritation. (Galvanism affects them all).^[61] But if they are only the higher functions of magnetism, electricity, &c., there must again be a higher synthesis for these in Nature^[62]—and this, however, it is certain, can be sought for 220only in Nature, in so far as, viewed as a whole, it is absolutely organic.

And this, moreover, is also the result to which the genuine Science of Nature must lead, viz: that the difference between organic and inorganic nature is only in Nature as object, and that Nature as originally-productive soars above both.^[63]

There remains only one remark, which we may make, not so much on account of its intrinsic interest, as in order to justify what we said above in regard to the relation of our system to the hitherto so-called dynamical system. If it were asked, for instance, in what form our original antithesis, cancelled, or rather fixed, in the product, would appear from the stand-point of reflection, we cannot better designate what is found in the product by analysis, than as expansive and attractive (retarding) force, to which then however, gravitation must always be added as the tertium quid, whereby those opposites become what they are.

Nevertheless, the designation is valid only for the stand-point of reflection or of analysis, and cannot be applied for synthesis at all; and thus our system leaves off exactly at the point where the Dynamical Physics of Kant and his successors begins, namely, at the antithesis as it presents itself in the product.

And with this the author delivers over these Elements of a System of Speculative Physics to the thinking heads of the age, begging them to make common cause with him in this science, which opens up views of no mean order, and to make up by their own powers, acquirements and external relations, for what, in these respects, he lacks.

[The notes not marked as “Remarks of the original” are by the German Editor.—Note of the Translator.]

II. Sculpture.—Architecture fashions and disposes of the masses of inert nature according to geometric laws, and it thus succeeds in presenting only a vague and incomplete symbol of the thought. Its [thought’s] progress consists in detaching itself from physical existence, and in expressing spirit in a manner more in conformity with its nature. The first step which art takes in this career does not yet indicate the return of spirit upon itself, which would render necessary a wholly spiritual mode of expression, and signs as immaterial as thought; but spirit appears under a corporeal, organized living form. What art represents is the animate, living body, and above all the human body, with which the soul is completely identified. Such is the rôle and the place which belong to Sculpture.

It still resembles architecture in this, that it fashions extended and solid material; but it is distinguished from it in this, that this material, in its hands, ceases to be foreign to spirit. The corporeal form blends with it, and becomes its living image. Compared to poetry, it seems at first to have the advantage over it of representing objects under their natural and visible form, while speech expresses ideas only by sounds; but this plastic clearness is more than compensated by the superiority of language as a means of expression. Speech reveals the innermost thoughts with a clearness altogether different from the lines of the figure, the countenance, and the attitudes of the body; further, it shows man in action—active in virtue of his ideas and his passions; it retraces the various phases of a complete event. Sculpture represents neither the inmost sentiments of the soul, nor its definite passions. It presents the individual character only in general, and 221to such an extent as the body can express in a given moment, without movement, without living action, without development. It yields also, in this respect, to painting, which, by the employment of color and the effects of light, acquires more of naturalness and truth, and, above all, a great superiority of expression. Thus, one might think at first that Sculpture would do well to add to its own proper means those of painting. This is a grave error; for that abstract form, deprived of color, which the statuary employs is not an imperfection in it—it is the limit which this art places upon itself.

Each art represents a degree, a particular form of the beautiful, a moment of the development of spirit, and expresses it excellently. To Sculpture it belongs to represent the perfection of the bodily form, plastic beauty, life, soul, spirit animating a body. If it should desire to transcend this limit, it would fail entirely; the use of foreign means would alter the purity of its works.

It is with art here as with science; each science has its object, peculiar, limited, abstract; its circle, in which it moves, and where it is free. Geometry studies extension, and extension only; arithmetic, number; jurisprudence, the right; &c. Allow any one to encroach upon the others, and to aim at universality; you introduce into its domain confusion, obscurity, real imperfection. They develop differently different objects; clearness, perfection, and even liberty, are to be purchased only at this price.

Art, too, has many phases; to each a distinct art corresponds. Sculpture stops at form, which it fashions according to its peculiar laws; to add color thereto is to alter, to disfigure its object. Thereby it preserves its character, its functions, its independence; it represents the material, corporeal side, of which architecture gives only a vague and imperfect symbol. It is given to painting, to substitute for this real form, a simple visible appearance, which then admits color, by joining to it the effects of perspective, of light and shade. But Sculpture ought to respect its proper limits, to confine itself to representing the corporeal form as an expression of the individual spirit, of the soul, divested of passion and definite sentiment. In so doing, it can so much the better content itself with the human form in itself, in which the soul is, as it were, spread over all points.

Such is also the reason why Sculpture does not represent spirit in action, in a succession of movements, having a determined end, nor engaged in those enterprises and actions which manifest a character. It prefers to present it in a calm attitude, or when the movement and the grouping indicate only the commencement of action. Through this very thing, that it presents to our eyes spirit absorbed in the corporeal form, designed to manifest it in its entirety, there is lacking the essential point where the expression of the soul centres itself, the glance of the eye. Neither has it any need of the magic of colors, which, by the fineness and variety of their shadings, are fitted to express all the richness of particular traits of character, and to manifest the soul, with all the emotions which agitate it. Sculpture ought not to admit materials of which it has no need at the step where it stops. The image fashioned by it, is of a single color; it employs primitive matter, the most simple, uniform, unicolored: marble, ivory, gold, brass, the metals. It is this which the Greeks had the ability perfectly to seize and hold.

After these considerations upon the general character of Sculpture, and its connections with other arts, Hegel approaches the more special study and the theory of this art. He considers it—1st, in its principle; 2d, in its ideal; 3d, in the materials which it employs, as well as in its various modes of representation and the principal epochs of its historic development.

We are compelled to discard a crowd of interesting details upon each of these points, and to limit ourselves to general ideas.

1. To seize fully the principle of Sculpture and the essence of this art, it is necessary 222to examine, in the first place, what constitutes the content of its representations, then the corporeal form which should express it; last, to see how, from the perfect accord of the idea and the form, results the ideal of Sculpture as it has been realized in Greek art.

The essential content of the representations of Sculpture is, as has been said, spirit incarnate in a corporeal form. Now, not every situation of the soul is fitted to be thus manifested. Action, movement, determined passion, can not be represented under a material form; that ought to show to us the soul diffused through the entire body, through all its members. Thus, what Sculpture represents is the individual spirit, or, according to the formula of the author, the spiritual individuality in its essence, with its general, universal, eternal character; spirit elevated above the inclinations, the caprices, the transient impressions which flow in upon the soul, without profoundly penetrating it. This entire phase of the personal principle ought to be excluded from the representations of Sculpture. The content of its works is the essence, the substantial, true, invariable part of character, in opposition to what is accidental and transient.

Now, this state of spirit, not yet particularized, unalterable, self-centered, calm, is the divine in opposition to finite existence, which is developed in the midst of accidents and contingencies, the exhibition of which this world of change and diversity presents us.

According to this, Sculpture should represent the divine in itself, in its infinite calm, and its eternal, immovable sublimity, without the discord of action and situation. If, afterward, affecting a more determinate mode, it represents something human in form and character, it ought still to thrust back all which is accidental and transient; to admit only the fixed, invariable side, the ground of character. This fixed element is what Sculpture should express as alone constituting the true individuality; it represents its personages as beings complete and perfect in themselves, in an absolute repose freed from all foreign influence. The eternal in gods and men is what it is called upon to offer to our contemplation in perfect and unalterable clearness.

Such is the idea which constitutes the essential content of the works of Sculpture. What is the form under which this idea should appear? We have seen, it is the body, the corporeal form. But the only form worthy to represent the spirit, is the human form. This form, in its turn, ought to be represented, not in that wherein it approximates the animal form, but in its ideal beauty; that is to say, free, harmonious, reflecting the spirit in the features which characterize it, in all its proportions, its purity, the regularity of its lines, by its mien, its postures, etc. It should express spirit in its calmness, its serenity—both soul and life, but above all, spirit.

These principles serve to determine the ideal of beauty under the physical form.

We must take care, in the works of Sculpture, not to confound this manner of looking at the perfect correspondence of the soul and bodily forms, with the study of the lineaments of the countenance, etc. The science of Gall, or of Lavater, which studies the correspondence of characters with certain lineaments of face or forms of head, has nothing in common with the artistic studies of the works of the statuary. These seem, it is true, to invite us to this study; but its point of view is wholly different; it is that of the harmonious and necessary accord of forms, from which beauty results. The ground of Sculpture excludes, moreover, precisely all the peculiarities of individual character to which the physiognomist attaches himself. The ideal form manifests only the fixed, regular, invariable, although living and individual type. It is then forbidden to the artist, as far as regards the physiognomy, to represent the most expressive and determinate lineaments of the countenance; for, beside looks, properly so-called, the expression of the physiognomy includes many things which are reflected transiently upon the face, in the countenance or the carriage, the smile and the glance. Sculpture should interdict to itself things so 223transient, and confine itself to the permanent traits of the expression of the spirit; in a word, it should incarnate in the human form the spiritual principle in its nature, at once general and individual, but not yet particularized. To maintain these two terms in just harmony, is the problem which falls to statuary, and which the Greeks have resolved.

The consequences to be deduced from these principles are the following:

In the first place, Sculpture is, more than the other arts, suited to the ideal, and this because of the perfect adaptation of the form to the idea; in the second place, it constitutes the centre of classic art, which represents this perfect accord of the idea and the sensuous form. It alone, in fact, offers to us those ideal figures, pure from all admixture—the perfect expression of physical beauty. It realizes, before our eyes, the union of the human and divine, under the corporeal form. The sense of plastic beauty was given above all to the Greeks, and this trait appears everywhere, not only in Greek art and Greek mythology, but in the real world, in historic personages: Pericles, Phidias, Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Sophocles, Thucydides, those artistic natures, artists of themselves—characters grand and free, supported upon the basis of a strong individuality, worthy of being placed beside the immortal gods which Greek Sculpture represents.

2. After having determined the principle of Sculpture, Hegel applies it to the study of the beau ideal, as the master-pieces of Greek art have realized it. He examines successively and in detail the character and conditions of the ideal form in the different parts of the human body, the face, the looks, the bearing, the dress. Upon all these points he faithfully follows Winckelmann, recapitulates him, and constantly cites him. The philosopher meanwhile preserves his originality; it consists in the manner in which he systematizes that which is simply described in the History of Art, and in giving throughout, the reason of that which the great critic, with his exquisite and profound sense, has so admirably seized and undeniably proved, but without being able to unfold the theory of it. The subject gathers, henceforth, new interest from this explication. We may cite, in particular, the description of the Greek profile, which, in the hands of the philosopher, takes the character of a geometric theorem. It is at the same time an example which demonstrates unanswerably the absolute character of physical beauty. The beauty of these lines has nothing arbitrary; they indicate the superiority of spirit, and the pre-eminence of the forms which express it above those which are suited to the functions of the animal nature. What he afterwards says of the looks, of the bearing, of the postures, of the antique dress compared with the modern dress, and of its ideal character, presents no less interest. But all these details, where the author shows much of discrimination, of genius even, and spirit, escape in the analysis. The article where he describes the particular attributes and the accessories which distinguish the personages of Greek Sculpture, although in great part borrowed also from Winckelmann, shows a spirit familiarized with the knowledge of the works of antiquity.

3. The chapter devoted to the different modes of representation of the materials of Sculpture, and of its historic development, is equally full of just and delicate observations. All this is not alone from a theorist, but from a connoisseur and an enlightened judge. The appreciation of the materials of Sculpture, and the comparison of their æsthetic value, furnish also to the author some very ingenious remarks upon a subject which seems scarcely susceptible of interest. Finally, in a rapid sketch, Hegel retraces the historic development of Sculpture, Egyptian Statuary, Etruscan art, the school of Ægina, are characterized in strokes remarkable for precision.

Arrived at Christian Sculpture, without disputing the richness and the ability which it has displayed in its works in wood, in stone, etc., and its excellence in respect to expression, Hegel maintains with reason, that the Christian principle is little favorable to Sculpture; and that in wishing 224to express the Christian sentiment in its profundity and its vivacity, it passes its proper limits. “The self-inspection of the soul, the moral suffering, the torments of body and of spirit, martyrdom and penitence, death and resurrection, the mystic depth, the love and out-gushing of the heart, are wholly unsuited to be represented by Sculpture, which requires calmness, serenity of spirit, and in expression, harmony of forms.” Thus, Sculpture here remains rather an ornament of architecture; it sculptures saints, bas reliefs upon the niches and porches of churches, turrets, etc. From another side, through arabesques and bas reliefs, it approximates the principle of painting, by giving too much expression to its figures, or by making portraits in marble and in stone. Sculpture comes back to its true principle, at the epoch of the renaissance, by taking for models the beautiful forms of Greek art.

Q. Tell me what is good music?

A. Concerning tastes—all fine natures—not the “fair sex” only, possess, as Bossuet says, an instinct for harmony of forms, colors, style and tones, especially for the latter, because the nerves of the ear being more exposed, are consequently more sensitive.

Discords massed together without system, produce a more disagreeable effect than ill-assorted colors; and on the other hand, the etherial beauty of tone-poetry excites the soul more powerfully than the splendor of a Titian or Correggio.

Q. This “instinct” and “taste,” are they one and the same?

A. To a certain degree only—though many amateurs, critics, musicians, and even composers, have had no other guide than a fine instinct.

Q. You speak as Pistocchi to the celebrated Farinelli: “A singer needs a hundred things, but a good voice is ninety-nine of them—the hundredth is the cultivation of the voice.”

A. The instinct of a delicate, sensitive organization, may go far, but I think the hundredth thing is also necessary; therefore, one possessed of the finest voice, but uncultivated, will sing sometimes badly, sometimes pretty well, but never quite perfectly for a real judge.

So it is with taste. Depending on natural gifts alone, without cultivation—you will be sometimes right—as often wrong. In short, your taste is good, if you find pleasure in those works only which are composed according to the principles of art; on the contrary, your taste is bad, false, corrupt, if you find pleasure in music full of faults and defects.

Q. Therefore, to be correct in taste, I must know the principles of the art; I must know the rules of “Harmony, Rhythm and Form,” and perhaps much more. Why, G. Weber has written three large volumes on “Harmony” alone. No, it is too difficult and takes too much time.

A. Yet it is not so difficult as it seems. To understand music rightly, nothing is necessary but the knowledge of two keys—major and minor; two kinds of time—common and triple—one simple chord and two cadences.

Q. But Rhythm, Form?

A. Form is Rhythm, and Rhythm is time.

Q. Let us begin then with the keys, you speak of two only—major and minor—but I have heard something of Ambroseanic, Gregoryanic, Glareanic and Greek keys, wherein are composed the beautiful and sublime compositions of Palestrina, Allegri, Lotti, that are performed annually during Passion-week in the church of St. Peter, at Rome.

A. Well, if you like to go so far back, 225we will speak about Ambrose, Gregory, Glareanus, but there are no such things as “Greek” keys.

The knowledge we have of the music of the Greeks, is too slight and imperfect to enable us to assert positively anything concerning it; and as nothing important or necessary to modern art is involved, we may be content to let the music of the ancients rest in the obscurity which surrounds it.

With the first Christians, who hated everything which came from the temples of the heathens, arose our music.

Their religious songs were a production of the new soul which came into them with Jesus Christ, and are the foundation of our great edifice of art, as it now exists. In the year 385, Saint Ambrose introduced four keys, D, E, F, G; Pope Gregory, in 597, added four others to these, and named the four of Ambrose, “authentic moods,” and his four, which began on every fifth of the first four, “plagalic.” In these eight keys, without sharps or flats, are composed the liturgic songs of the Roman church, called “Gregorian chants.” They are written in notes of equal value, without Rhythm or Metre, and are sung in unison with loud voice. Glareanus added to those eight keys, two more, A and C, with their plagal moods. To distinguish more clearly, some one called the key beginning with “D,” Doric, “E,” Phrygic, “F,” Lydic, “G,” Mixolydic, “A,” Æolic, and “B,” Tonic. These names are all we have borrowed from Greece.

Palestrina, the preserver of our art, wrote his compositions in these keys, and for the highest purity of harmony, rhythmical beauty, sublime simplicity, and deep religious feeling, his works are still unrivalled.

Q. Why don’t you compose in the old keys and in Palestrina’s style?

A. They are used sometimes by Handel in his Oratorios, by Sebastian Bach in his fugues for organ and piano. Later, Beethoven has written an Andante in the Lydic mood in his string-quartette (A minor). I myself have composed the first chorus of Vinvela, in the Mixolydic mood, and in Comala, the song to the moon, in the Doric mood; but Handel, Bach, Beethoven, and myself, have written in our own style, and never imitated Palestrina’s. Men in similar situations, only, have similar ideas. All older works of music utter a language which we yet understand, but cannot speak. We feel its deep innermost accents, but we cannot tune the chords of our soul to that pitch which harmonizes in every respect with that feeling. Palestrina’s music sounds like that of another world; it is all quite simple; mostly common chords, here and there only a chord of the sixth; and always an irresistible charm.

This riddle is partially explained, if we observe how Palestrina selected the tones for the different parts in his choruses. Let us take the third, c—e; e. g. let the soprano and the alto sing this third, and you will have the same harmonic sound that the piano or organ gives. But let the tenor sing one of these tones, and soprano or alto the other, and the effect will be very different, although the tones are the same. Palestrina knew not only the particular sound of every tone in every voice, but also the effect which such or such combinations would produce.

This mystery is taught neither by a singing school, nor by a theory of composition, and few composers of to-day know it. How great and beautiful is Beethoven’s solemn mass in D! What an effect would it make, had Beethoven possessed the same knowledge of voices that he had of instruments? Now, unfortunately, one often overpowers the others, and the enjoyment of this composition will be always greater for the eye than the ear.

We will now go back to the old keys. These are taken from the music produced at that time, as our two keys, major and minor, are taken from the melodies of later times.

This seems very simple to us, but not to our great theorists. Gottfried Weber takes two keys, major c, d, e, f, g, a, b, c, and minor a, b, c, d, e, f, g sharp, the same rising and falling equally.

Hauptmann, the first teacher of harmony in the Conservatory of Music at Leipsic, says in his book, The Nature of Harmony and Metre, page 30—“The key is formed, 226when the common chord (c, e, g), after having gone through the subdominant-chord (f, a, c), and dominant-chord (g, b, d), has come in opposition with itself; this opposition coupled together, becomes unity and the key.” He finds in our music three keys, and names them, the major, the minor, and the minor major.

R. Wagner recognizes no key at all; for him exists a chromatic scale only. He says: “The scale is the most closely united, the most intimately related family among tones.” He does not like to stay long in one key, and takes the continuous change of keys for a quality of the music of the future; therefore, he finds in Beethoven’s last symphony, in the melody to Schiller’s poem, a going back, because it has scarcely any modulation.

We will not be so lavish with keys as Hauptmann, nor so economical as R. Wagner, neither are we of Weber’s opinion. We find in C major the old Glareanic key, called also “Ionic;” in our A minor of this day, a “mixtum compositum” of several old keys; it begins as the “Æolic” a, b, c, d, e, f, takes then its seventh tone, g sharp, from the Lydic, transposed a third higher; uses sometimes also the sixth of the last, accepts lastly the character of the Phrygic, transposed a fourth higher, and brings thus the tone b flat into its scale, which has been already the subject of much discussion, although that has never succeeded in throwing this tone out of many melodies in A minor. We have melodies which are the pure A minor from the beginning to the end, wherein we find f sharp and f natural, g and g sharp, b and b flat, and the last oftener than f sharp; therefore, we must build the scale of A minor, and its harmony, according to those different tones; it will

Let us proceed. The two kinds of time are common and triple. The rhythm of the first is—__, that of the second—__ __. The accentuation of subdivisions is governed by the same law. It makes no difference whether a piece of music is written in 2|3 or 2|4, or even 2|8 time; but good composers of music, writing in 2|4 time, intend the same to be of lighter rendition than those composed in 2|2 time, etc.

Concerning harmony, there is one chord only—all other harmonies are passing notes, inversions, prolongations, suspensions or retardations of chord-tones, or from sharped and diminished intervals. Harmony is a connection of different melodies. Before chords were known, they descanted, that is, they tried to sing to a melody, commonly a sacred hymn, called cantus firmus, different harmonical tones, and named this part, Descant; Italian, soprano; French, Le dessus. Later there was added to the tenor (which performed the cantus firmus) a higher part, named alto, and lastly, a lower part was added called bass. These four parts, though each melodious and independent in itself, harmonized closely with each other, all striving for the same aim.

Even to-day we must necessarily call such music good, wherein every voice acts independently of all others, and still in harmony with the same, in order to express the reigning feeling, and sustain the various shades in contrast to non-acting and lifeless trabants, which may be strikingly seen in many compositions, particularly in four-part songs for male voices, by Abt, Gumbert, Kücken, etc., wherein three voices (Brummstimmen) accompany the fourth with a growling sound escaping their closed lips.

The two cadences or musical phrases are the cadence on the tonic and the cadence on the dominant. The cadence on the tonic, consisting of the chord in the dominant, followed by that of the tonic, concludes the sense of the musical phrase, and is called “perfect” when the tonic is in the highest and lowest part. It corresponds to a period in language. The cadence on the dominant consists of the tonic, or the chord of the second or fourth going to the dominant. The cadence of the dominant suspends the sense of the musical phrase without concluding it. This is likewise the case with the cadence on the tonic, if the tonic is not in the highest and lowest part.

Q. You say nothing of the great mistake wherein two fifths or octaves follow each other?

227A. Of course, the true nature of the proper arrangement of parts excludes all direct fifths.

It is considered by the new school “an exploded idea.” Mozart himself made use of fifths in the first finale of Don Giovanni.

Q. I have heard something of these fifths, but was told it was “irony,” being contained in the minuet which Mozart composed for “country musicians”?

A. You also find octaves in S. Bach’s “Matthew Passion,” p. 25, “On the cross,” where surely no ironical meaning was intended.

Q. Do you not say anything in regard to form?

A. Form is an “exploded idea” also. The composers of the new school construct their vocal music so as to let the poem govern the music in relation to metre and form; in their instrumental compositions, the form is governed by phantasy.

Q. But what do you understand by a symphony, sonata or overture?

A. I must again go back, in order to explain this properly.

Revolutions often beat the path for new ideas. Palestrina towers great and unattainable in his compositions of sacred music, which breathe and express the purest catholicism.

But a Luther, Zwingli, and others came, followed soon by Handel and Bach, who, about the middle of the eighteenth century, created a music full of freshness, primitiveness and transporting power, which lived and died with the reformers.

The three grand-masters, Palestrina, Handel and Bach, equal, but do not rival each other. We cannot judge them for the different sentiments they indulged in. The philosophers may settle which is the best religion, for to the necessity of one they all agree, but music cannot be chained by dogmas. Heaven is an orb, whose centre is everywhere. Palestrina’s music is the language of the south, Handel’s and Bach’s that of the north. Though one sun illumes both lands—though one ether spans both, yet in the south the sun is milder, the ether purer. Flowers which there grow in wild abundance, the north must obtain by culture.

We must think at our work.

This necessity of thought is apparent in religion, language and art, and can be seen most clearly in the greatest works of the German grand-masters, in Bach’s “Matthew Passion,” and Handel’s “Israel.”

Sebastian Bach’s astonishing dexterity in thematical works is the reason that even unto this day we do not find a symphony or overture appropriate for a concert, of which the single motive forming the principal thought of the movement is not worked up on the basis which he constructed with such deep knowledge and skill.

To him we must retrace our steps, in order to perceive the true nature of our instrumental music, for we are as little masters of the course of our ideas, as of the circulation of the blood in our veins. Centuries have passed, and although the first great instrumental-piece—the overture—was a French production, (Lulli was the first master in this genre of art,) yet Bach and Handel impressed the first decided stamp upon it.

Later, the overture was supplanted by the symphony, for the reason that it was of easier composition and execution than the former. The overture consisted of a grave, followed by a fugue. The symphony was composed somewhat in the style of a fugue and that of the lively dances of that time.

Shortly after this period, the dance-music was thought no longer fashionable, and was succeeded by two Allegros, with an Andante or Largo placed between them.

Father Hayden felt hurt at the complete abandonment of dance-music, and again adopted the minuet. Mozart also preferred the grave and majestic dancing-step of his ancestors, the minuet. But Beethoven’s impetuous and passionate nature scoffed at the slow and gracious movements of the minuet, and revelled instead in the wild Scherzo, or in the capricious demonical leaps of the old Passepied. Dark and mighty forms rose before the gloomy vision of his inner-man, acting powerfully upon the phantasy, and wherever they met this volcanic fire, always leaving a deep impression.

228Two comets ushered in the existence of our century; the one revolutionized the exterior—the other, the interior world. Especially were the young generation touched by the electric sparks of their rays.

Napoleon’s battles were repeated a thousand times in the nurseries with lead and paper soldiers. Beethoven’s melodies agitated the souls of the young generation in their working and dreaming hours. When the shoes of the child became too small they were thrown aside; the lead and paper soldiers shared the same fate; but the melodious tones grew with the soul to more and more powerful chords. Beethoven’s star shone brighter, while Napoleon’s was already fading. Then we heard that Beethoven intended to destroy his great symphony called “Eroica.” Napoleon, the consul, to whom Beethoven designed to dedicate this great work, had sunk to Napoleon the Emperor, and Beethoven felt ashamed.

Majesty of rank is often devoid of the grace and majesty of the soul. The chord e^b, g, b^b wherewith the bass solemnly introduced the third symphony (Eroica), and his inversions in the Scherzo b^b, e^b, g, b^b, and in the last movement e, b, b, e, this echo of the Marseillaise suited no longer and should perish with it. Only then, when fate, in the icy deserts of Russia, clasped the grand General in its iron grip, and never loosened its hold until it had crushed him, did the composer of the Eroica comprehend that in the marcia funebre contained in this symphony, he had spoken in prophetic voice. The prophecy contained in the last movement was destined to be fulfilled in the latter half of this century.

As Beethoven poured out his soul in a prophetic epopee, so did Mozart embody his genius in his Don Giovanni. But as the sublime always acts more powerfully upon youth than knowledge and beauty, so likewise was the success of Beethoven greater than that of Mozart in this century. Altogether Mozart is generally appreciated better in riper years. “La delicatesse du gout est une première nuance de la satiété.”

Mendelssohn, whose compositions ever flowed smoothly and quietly, understood well how to tune his harmonica to Mozart’s tuning-fork.

Q. You represent Beethoven as grave and solemn, and yet it appears he was not a great despiser of dances. Take, for instance, his A major symphony. Lively to overflowing, almost mad with frantic joy, is the first movement. Equal to a double quick-step, the last, about as the peasants of Saxony perform their dances, the Scherzo gay; and in the Andante, he even calls upon a lot of old bachelors and maiden-ladies, with their hoop accompaniment, to fall in and execute their tours?

A. What opposite views are often taken of the same thing by different minds! In the andante, in which you find so much humor, Marx observes the sober view of life, at first the peaceful and untroubled step, but growing ever more and more painful, and suffering, fighting the battle of life; yet, be this as it may, such music is ever successful, even in spite of the biting criticism of Maria v. Weber, and the ferocious attacks of Oulibischeff.

Q. A good dance is always successful, I believe?

A. Mendelssohn knew this, as he also understood Beethoven and the public, when he wrote his dance overture, “A Summer-night’s Dream.” Auber, Herold and others wrote dance overtures en masse, and we often find more piquant themes in them than Beethoven’s A major symphony, or Mendelssohn’s Summer-night’s Dream can boast of, yet we do not prefer them for the concert.

All compositions for an orchestra, be they overture or symphony, must first contain a theme, which expresses the character of the principal composition. Second, the expansions of compositions in the style of a symphony, must, according to my opinion, originate from one theme, germinate from one seed, growing larger and stronger all the time, until the swelling bud bursts into a beautiful blossom; yet there must not be orange-blossoms on an oak-tree; all must fit harmoniously.

The theme, sujet, or motive, must be a fixed idea, such as “love;” it must be ever 229present—the first at day-break, the last at night—no other impression must be strong enough to erase it.

If, by the blossom, you understand the creation of a second thought, often called the second theme, even this second theme ought to be governed by the first, even this blossom ought to glow in the same colors. It must be so twined around the heart of the composer, that nothing foreign could possibly enter it. Merely thematical productions are exercises for the pupil; compositions which merely contain parts composed by rule, are merely a musical exercise. Lobe certainly is wrong, if he thus teaches the art of composing.

True, it is easy to point out how one part belongs here, the other there, yet the composition must be a free expression of the soul.

Third—The finishing of the same. This must also be governed in its main parts by the predominating feeling, and only minor thoughts and impressions must be used by the composer to fill up or cast away.

Let us now turn, for illustration, to the theme of Wagner’s overture to Faustus. In the introduction we first see it in the eighth measure, very moderate, in the dominant d minor, commencing with the notes a ā | b^b b^b. a | g sharp, and headed “very expressive,” concerning which Von Bulow observes, that it truly expresses the feeling and character of the last lines of the motto which Wagner chose at the heading:

If we designate the above-mentioned theme by figure I. we must name the figure which already makes its appearance in the second measure, and which is of the utmost importance, to wit, d sharp, e, f, f, e, e, b, b, figure II., the first theme having been expressed by the violin, the second figure reappears again in the tenth measure, executed by the viola, growling like a furiously racked demon, while the wind instruments, flute, oboe and clarionet, “very expressive,” and yet full of sympathizing sorrow, intervene at the last quarter of the tenth measure with the motive, which we will call figure III. Figure II. continues rumbling in the quartette, relieved by another figure (IV.) descending from above, which is introduced by the second violin in the fourteenth measure. Figure IV. now extends itself further above a chromatic bass, until in the nineteenth measure, in d major, a clear and distinct new motive, gentle and forgiving in character (V.) makes its appearance.

These five motives which the composer so exquisitely leads before us, in his very moderate introduction, now receive the finishing-touch in the allegro. Thus speaks Von Bulow.

Truly, as Goethe says: “If you perform a piece, be sure to perform the same in pieces.”

I will pass over the introduction, though I have as little taste for such “theme pieces” succeeding each other, as for Opera-overtures, such as that of Tannhäuser, where pilgrim-songs, the love-sick murmurings of the voluptuous Venus, and the tedious Count’s drawling sorrow for his only daughter and heir, form a hash, which in the details, and in the heterogeneous compilation of the same, is unpalatable enough, but which is made unbearable by the soul-killing figures—no! not figures, but by the up and down strokes of monotonous bases, which continue for about sixty measures. Setting aside even all this, we may justly expect in the allegro the expansion of the principle theme I., yet we have no such thing; in place of the “idea” he produces after the first five measures a worthless figure, fit for accompaniment only, which is supported on its tottering basis by the twenty-seven times repeated downstroke of the conductor only.

Q. Excuse me; but the tone-picture, which Von Bulow, R. Wagner’s friend and admirer, calls the forgiving voice (III), reappears twice in wind-instrument music?

A. According to Lobe’s system. Borrow a measure or two from a theme, then a motive, which you may construct from this or that or a third figure, and you have, besides the required unity, the grandest variation.

Do you know, my young friend, what a composer understands by an exploded 230idea? The technical! All who study the art of composing, as Lobe teaches it, may learn to become compilers but not composers; or they must drink elder-tea, till their visions appear black and blue to them, in order to evaporate the schooling they enjoyed. After twenty-seven measures of earthly smoke, there appears a solitary star, theme I., continuing for four whole measures, followed by a little more mist.

Q. No; I think Bulow says the mist is parted by a firm and punctuated motive.

A. If it is not firm, it is at least fortissimo. Enough, we again hear thirteen measures of unimportant music, concluded by d minor, followed by a new melody for a hautboy, which, as it repeats the two first notes of the first theme, may claim to be considered as belonging there, leading to a third in f major, in company with a tremulando, à la Samiel, crescendo and diminuendo. We have now arrived at the point where we may look for the second theme, “the blossom,” as we before said, but alas, in vain your tortured soul waits, no blossoms! The thermometer sinks again! With the cadence we again hear theme I., after four measures we find ourselves once more in d flat major—no, in a minor, b flat major or b flat minor, or g minor, it is difficult to say which, for this part may be said to belong in the “most inseparably combined, the closest related family of all keys.” Enough, we find ourselves after twenty-six measures exactly at the very place we started from, before the performance of twenty-six measures, namely, in f major.

This movement of twenty-six measures might be wholly thrown out, without one being any wiser—a possibility which, in every good composition, must be looked upon as a great fault, as all parts must be so closely united as to enforce the presence and support of each other.

We will now look at the second theme. In it no critic can find a fault. It unravels itself smoothly, and, after forty-nine measures, conducts us again to motive V. in the introduction, as likewise to figure II., which here does not frown quite so much.

Figure V. first appears in f, after twenty-two measures in g flat major, after fourteen more in A minor, after thirty-four in d minor, and after another thirty-nine measures we at last hear theme I. again, in the dominant of the bass, a Faustus with lantern jaws, sunken temples, sparse hair, but with a very, very magnificent bread-basket.

The blossom is larger than the whole tree. If it is not a miracle, it is a wonderful abortion. Are you now curious as to the second part? Oh! it almost appears like a fugue, the bass dies away, a fifth higher the cello commences, another fifth higher the viola in unison with the second violin; but as the composer has strayed already from d minor to b minor, he does not think it safe to stray further; the wind instruments continue by themselves in figure II.

Q. Bulow says the cello and viola united, once more introduce the principal theme.

A. Just so. After the bassoon has tried twice to begin the same, after about thirty measures of worldly ether, more devoid of stars than the South Pole, it is headed “wild!” The leading theme once more begins in the principal tonic (d minor), etc., afterwards enlarged, the first two notes converted, caught up by the cello and the trumpet, wherein the bass-trombone is expected to perform the high A, and after twenty-eight measures of “hated existence” the second theme in d major, together with the finale, appears like a short bright ray of the glorious sun on a misty winter day.

is Wagner’s motto, which he has justly chosen for the heading of his overture, and I attempt no alteration only at the conclusion, and close with—

Q. Bulow would also answer as Goethe:

A. I have never found fault with these 231parts, excepting, perhaps, that I said the working out of the second theme is, in proportion to the first theme, too extensive; in fact, there is nothing of the future contained in the overture.

Q. No future?

A. I mean to say, no music of the future—not even a chromatic scale for the fundamental key—it moves entirely in the common form:

Principal theme—d minor;

Second theme—f major;

Return to fundamental key;

Second theme—d major, and conclusion in this key.

The finish and working up is neat and careful, and many pretty and uncommon effects occur therein; still I do not think the same in its proper place for a concert.

It inherits nothing of the Bach; the piece is well constructed, yet the small pieces cannot escape criticism. Even Beethoven, in the first movements of his Eroica makes us acquainted with all the parts he intends to work up, and in his c minor symphony he says plainly: Now observe; the notes g g g e flat compose the whole, nothing more. But after that it is a rushing flow, an unbroken ring and song, pressing breathlessly onward, which captivates and carries us along with its force. To express myself plainly, I may say that we can perceive the work was done before it began.

It is true, and I will not deny that even he applied the file to heighten its polish, yet the whole structure stood finished to his vision before even these first four notes were penned.

No doubt R. Wagner also imagined a picture before he painted it, but surely no musical one; the poetry was there—the music had to be manufactured. It is full of genius, and not untrue; but he does not allow sufficient freedom to the different instruments, and is, consequently, not sufficiently “obligato.”

The parts succeed, instead of going in company or against each other.

Although now one, then another instrument catches up a thought, yet the whole appears more like a Quartette of Pleyel than one of Beethoven’s—the overture is not thought out polyphonically. Many, however, do not know what Polyphonism is; it has been written about in many curious ways. The pupil will best learn to write music in a polyphonic manner, if, at the commencement, he invents at once a double-voiced movement, but in such a manner that one voice is not the subordinate of the other; both are equally necessary to represent the meaning of the thought he wishes to express.

In this manner he may or must continue in regard to the three or four-voiced movements likewise.

The addition of voices to a melody satisfactory in itself, be they ever so well flourished, cannot properly be called polyphonism.

Polyphonism, however, should be the ruling principle in all orchestral concert compositions, although in some points, for instance, in the second theme, homophony may take its place.

A well composed symphony or overture must not entertain the audience only, but every performing musician must feel that he is not an instrument or a machine, but a living and intelligent being.

The overture to Faustus so entirely ignores Polyphony, that it seems a virtual denial of its effectiveness and importance in orchestral composition.

Richard Wagner will never become a composer of instrumental music, but in his operas he has opened a new avenue, and his creations therein are something grand and sublime.

[We print below a condensed statement of the central doctrine of Arthur Schopenhauer. It is translated from his work entitled “Ueber den Willen in der Natur,” 2d ed., 1854, Frankfort—pp. 19-23, and 63. To those familiar with the kernel of speculative truth, it is unnecessary to remark that the basis of the system herewith presented is thoroughly speculative, and resembles in some respects that of Leibnitz in the Monadology, printed in our last number. It is only an attempt to solve all problems through self-determination, and this in its immediate form as the will. Of course the immediateness (i. e. lack of development or realization) of the principle employed here, leads into difficulty, and renders it impossible for him to see the close relation he stands in to other great thinkers. Hence he uses very severe language when speaking of other philosophers. If the Will is taken for the “Radical of the Soul,” then other forms of self-determination, e. g. the grades of knowing, will not be recognized as possessing substantiality, and hence the theoretical mind will be subordinated to the practical;—a result, again, which is the outcome of the Philosophy of Fichte. But Leibnitz seizes a more general aperçu, and identifies self-determination with cognition in its various stages; and hence he rises to the great principle of Recognition as the form under which all finitude is cancelled—all multiplicity preserved in the unity of the Absolute.—Editor.]

The idea of a soul as a metaphysical being, in whose absolute simplicity will and intellect were an indissoluble unity, was a great and permanent impediment to all deeper insight into natural phenomena. The cardinal merit of my doctrine, and that which puts it in opposition to all the former philosophies, is the perfect separation of the will from the intellect. All former philosophers thought will to be inseparable from the intellect; the will was declared to be conditioned upon the intellect, or even to be a mere function of it, whilst the intellect was regarded as the fundamental principle of our spiritual existence. I am well aware that to the future alone belongs the recognition of this doctrine, but to the future philosophy the separation, or rather the decomposition of the soul into two heterogeneous elements, will have the same significance as the decomposition of water had to chemistry. Not the soul is the eternal and indestructible or the very principle of life in men, but what I might call the Radical of the soul, and that is the Will. The so-called soul is already a compound; it is the combination of will and the νοῦς, intellect. The intellect is the secondary, the posterius in any organism, and, as a mere function of the brain, dependent upon the organism. The will, on the contrary, is primary, the prius of the organism, and the organism consequently is conditioned by it. For the will is the very “thing in itself,” which in conception (that is, in the peculiar function of the brain) exhibits itself as an organic body. Only by virtue of the forms of cognition, that is, by virtue of that function of the brain—hence only in conception—one’s body is something extended and organic, not outside of it, or immediately in self-consciousness. Just as the various single acts of the body are nothing but the various acts of the will portrayed in the represented world, just so is the shape of this body as a totality the image of its will as a whole. In all organic functions of the body, therefore, just as in its external actions, the will is the “agens.” True physiology, on its height, shows the intellect to be the product of the physical organization, but true metaphysics show, that physical existence itself is the product, or rather the appearance, of a spiritual agens, to-wit, the will; nay, that matter itself is conditioned through conception, in which alone it exists. Perception and thought may well be explained by the nature of the organism; the will never can be; the contrary is true, namely, that every organism originates by and from the will. This I show as follows:

I therefore posit the will as the “thing in itself”—as something absolutely primitive; secondly, the simple visibility of the will, its objectivation as our body; and thirdly, the intellect as a mere function of a certain part of that body. That part (the brain) is the objectivated desire (or will) to know, which became represented: for the will, to reach its ends, 233needs the intellect. This function again pre-supposes the whole world as representation; it therefore pre-supposes also the body as an object, and even matter itself, so far as existing only in representation, for an objective world without a subject in whose intellect it stands, is, well considered, something altogether unthinkable. Hence intellect and matter (subject and object) only relatively exist for each other, and in that way constitute the apparent world.

Whenever the will acts on external matter, or whenever it is directed towards a known object, thus passing through the medium of knowledge, then all recognize that the agens, which here is in action, is the will, and they call it by that name. Yet, that is will not less which acts in the inner process that precedes those external actions as their condition, which create and preserve the organic life and its substrate; and secretion, digestion, and the circulation of the blood, are its work also. But just because the will was recognized only while leaving the individual from which it started, and directing itself to the external world, which precisely for that purpose now appears as perception, the intellect was regarded as its essential condition, as its sole element, and as the very substance out of which it was made, and thereby the very worst hysteron proteron was committed that ever happened.

Before all, one should know how to discriminate between will and arbitrariness (Wille und Willkühr), and one should understand that the first can exist without the second. Will is called arbitrariness where it is lighted by intellect, and whenever motives or conceptions are its moving causes; or, objectively speaking, whenever external causes which produce an act are mediated by a brain. The motive may be defined as an external irritation, by whose influence an image is formed in the brain, and under the mediation of which the will accomplishes its effect, that is, an external act of the body. With the human species the place of that image may be occupied by a concept, which being formed from images of a similar kind, by omitting the differences, is no longer intuitive, but only marked and fixed by words. Hence as the action of motives is altogether independent of any contact, they therefore can measure their respective forces upon the will, on each other, and thereby permit a certain choice. With the animals, that choice is confined to the narrow horizon of what is visibly projected before them; among men it has the wide range of the thinkable, or of its concepts, as its sphere. Those movements, therefore, which result from motives, and not from causes, as in the inorganic world, nor from mere irritation, as with the plants, are called arbitrary movements. These motives pre-suppose knowledge, the medium of the motives, through which in this case causality is effected, irrespective of their absolute necessity in any other respect. Physiologically, the difference between irritation and motive may be described thus: Irritation excites a reaction immediately, the reaction issuing from the same part upon which the irritation had acted; whilst a motive is an irritation, which must make a circuit through the brain, where first an image is formed, and that image then originates the ensuing reaction, which now is called an act of the free will. Hence the difference between free and unfree movements does not concern the essential and primary, which in both is the will, but only the secondary, that is, the way in which the will is aroused; to-wit, whether it shows itself in consequence of some real cause, or of an irritation, or of a motive, that is, of a cause that had to pass through the organ of the intellect.

Free will or arbitrariness is only possible in the consciousness of men. It differs from the consciousness of animals in this, that it contains not only present and tangible representations, but abstract concepts, which, independent of the differences of time, act simultaneously and side by side, permitting thereby conviction or a conflict of motives; this, in the strictest sense of the word, is called free will. Yet this very free will or choice consists only in the victory of the stronger motive over a weaker in a given individual character, by which the ensuing action was determined, just as one impulse is overpowered by 234a stronger counter impulse, whereby the effect nevertheless appears with the same necessity as the movement of a stone that has received an impulse. The great thinkers of all times agree in this decidedly; while, on the contrary, the vulgar will little understand the great truth, that the mark of our liberty is not to be found in our single acts, but in our existence itself, and in its very essence. Whenever one has succeeded to discriminate will from free will, or the arbitrary, and to consider the latter as a peculiar species of the former, then there is no more room for any difficulty in discovering the will also in occurrences wherein intelligence cannot be traced.

The will is the original. It has created the world, but not through the medium of an intellect either outside or inside of the world, for we know of the intellect only through the mediation of the animal world, the very last in creation. The will itself, the unintentional will which is discovered in everything, is the creator of the world. The animals, therefore, are organized in accordance with their mode of living, and their mode of living is not shaped in conformity with their organs; the structure of any animal is the result of its will to be what it is. Nature, which never lies, tells us the same in its naïve way; it lets any being just kindle the first spark of its life on one of his equals, and then lets it finish itself before our eyes. The form and the movement it takes from its own self, the substance from outside. This is called growth and development. Thus even empirically do all beings stand before us as their own work; but the language of nature is too simple, and therefore but few understand it.

Cognition, since all motives are dependent on it, is the essential characteristic of the animal kingdom. When animal life ceases, cognition ceases also; and arrived at that point, we can comprehend the medium by which the influences from the external world on the movements of other beings are effected only by analogy, whilst the will, which we have recognized as the basis and as the very kernel of all beings, always and everywhere remains the same. On the low stage of the vegetable world, and of the vegetative life in the animal organizations, it is irritation, and in the inorganic world it is the mechanical relation in general which appears as the substitute or as the analogue of the intellect. We cannot say that the plants perceive the light and the sun, but we see that they are differently affected by the presence or absence of the sun, and that they turn themselves towards it; and though in fact that movement mostly coincides with their growth, like the rotation of the moon with its revolution, that movement nevertheless exists, and the direction of the growth of a plant is just in the same way determined and systematically modified as an action is by a motive. Inasmuch, therefore, as a plant has its wants, though not of the kind which require a sensorium or an intellect, something analogous must take their place to enable the will to seize at least a supply offered to it, if not to go in quest of it. This is the susceptibility for irritation, which differs from the intellect, in that the motive and subsequent act of volition are clearly separated from each other, and the clearer, the more perfect the intellect is; whilst at the mere susceptibility for an irritation, the feeling of the irritation and the resulting volition can no longer be discriminated. In the inorganic world, finally, even the susceptibility for irritation, whose analogy with the intellect cannot be mistaken, ceases, and there remains nothing but the varied reaction of the bodies against the various influences. This reaction is the substitute for the intellect. Whenever the reaction of a body differs from another, the influence also must be different, creating a different affection, which even in its dullness yet shows a remote analogy with the intellect. If, for instance, the water in an embankment finds an issue and eagerly precipitates itself through it, it certainly does not perceive the break, just as the acid does not perceive the alkali, for which it leaves the metal; yet we must confess that what in all these bodies has effected such sudden changes, has a certain resemblance with that which moves ourselves whenever we act in consequence of 235an unexpected motive. We therefore see that the intellect appears as the medium of our motives, that is, as the medium of causality in regard to intellectual beings, as that which receives the change from the external world, and which must be followed by a change in ourselves, as the mediator between both. On this narrow line, balances the whole world as representation, i. e. that whole extensive world in space and time, which as such cannot be anywhere else but in our brain, just as dreams; for the periods of their duration stand on the very same basis. Whatever to the animals and to man is given by his intellect as a medium of the motives, the same is given to the plants by their susceptibility for irritation, and to inorganic bodies by their reaction on the various causes, which in fact only differ in respect to the degree of volition; for, just in consequence of the fact, that in proportion to their wants the susceptibility for external impressions was raised to such a degree in the animals that a brain and a system of nerves had to develop itself, did consciousness, moreover, originate as a function of this brain, and in this consciousness the whole objective world, whose forms (time, space and causality) are the rules for the exercise of this function. We therefore discover that the intellect is calculated only for the subjective, merely to be a servant of the will, appearing only “per accidens” as a condition of animal life, where motives take the place of irritation. The picture of the external world, which at this stage enters into the forms of time and space, is but the background on which motives represent themselves as ends; it is also the condition of the connection of the external objects in regard to space and causality, but yet is nothing else but the mediation and the tie between the motive and the will. What a leap would it be to take this picture to be the true, ultimate essence of things,—this image of the world, which originates accidentally in the intellect as a function of animal brains, whereby the means to their ends are shown them, and their ways on this planet cleared up! What a temerity to take this image and the connection of its parts to be the absolute rule of the world, the relations of the things in themselves—and to suppose that all that could just as well exist independently of our brain! And yet this supposition is the very ground on which all the dogmatical systems previous to Kant were based, for it is the implicit pre-supposition of their Ontology, Cosmology, Theology, and of all their Eternal Verities.

By this realistic examination we have gained very unexpectedly the objective point of view of Kant’s immortal discovery, arriving by our empirical, physiological way to the same point whence Kant started with his transcendental criticism. Kant made the subjective his basis, positing consciousness; but from its à priori nature he comes to the result, that all that happens in it can be nothing else but representation. We, on the contrary, starting from the objective, have discovered what are the ends and the origin of the intellect, and to what class of phenomena it belongs. We discover in our way, that the intellect is limited to mere representations, and that what is exhibited in it is conditioned by the subject, that is, a mundane phenomenon, and that just in the same way the order and the connection of all external things is conditioned by the subject, and is never a knowledge of what they are in themselves, and how they may be connected with each other. We, in our way, like Kant in his, have discovered that the world as representation, balances on that narrow line between the external cause (motive) and the produced effect (act of will) of intelligent (animal) beings, where the clear discrimination of the two commences. Ita res accendent lumina rebus.

Our objective stand-point is realistic, and therefore conditioned, inasmuch as starting from natural beings as posited, we have abstracted from the circumstance that their objective existence presupposes an intellect, in which they find themselves as representations; but Kant’s subjective and idealistic stand-point is equally conditioned, inasmuch as it starts from the intellect, which itself is conditioned by nature, in consequence of whose development up to the animal world it only comes into existence. Holding fast to this, our 236realistic-objective stand-point, Kant’s doctrine may be characterized thus: after Locke had abstracted the rôle of the senses, under the name of “secondary properties,” for the purpose of distinguishing things in themselves from things as they appear, Kant, with far greater profundity, abstracted the rôle of the brain functions [conceptions of the understanding]—a less considerable rôle than that of the senses—and thus abstracted as belonging to the subjective all that Locke had included under the head of primary properties. I, on the other hand, have merely shown why all stands thus in relation, by exhibiting the position which the intellect assumes in the System of Nature when we start realistically from the objective as a datum, and take the Will, of which alone we are immediately conscious, as the true που στῶ of all metaphysics—as the essence of which all else is only the phenomenon.

Everything, to be known, must be thought as belonging to a system. This result was the conclusion of Chapter VI. To illustrate: acid is that which hungers for a base; its sharp taste is the hunger itself; it exists only in a tension. Hence to think an acid we must think a base; the base is ideally in the acid, and is the cause of its sharpness. The union of the acid and base gives us a salt, and in the salt we cannot taste the acid nor the base distinctly, for each is thoroughly modified by the other, each is cancelled. We separate the acid and base again and there exist two contradictions—acid and base—each calling for the other, each asserting its complement to be itself. For the properties of a somewhat are its wants, i. e. what it lacks of the total.

Such elements of a total as we are here considering, have been called “moments” by Hegel. The total is the “negative unity” (See Chap. IV.)

In the illustration we have salt as the negative unity of the moments, acid and base. The unity is called negative because its existence destroys each of the moments by adding the other to it. After the negative unity exists, each of the moments is no longer in a tension, but has become thoroughly modified by the other. The negative unity is ideal when the moments are held asunder—it is then potential, and through it each moment has its own peculiar properties.

More generally: every somewhat is determined by another; its characteristic, therefore, is the manifestation of its other or of the complement which makes with it the total or negative unity.

The complete thought of any somewhat includes the phases or moments, as such, and their negative unity. This may properly be called the comprehension. To comprehend [Begreifen] we must seize the object in its totality; com-prehend = to seize together, just as con-ceive = to take together; but conception is generally used in English to signify a picture of the object more or less general. Not the totality, but only some of its characteristics, are grasped together in a conception. Hence conceptions are subjective, i. e. they do not correspond to the true object in its entirety; but comprehension is objective in the sense that everything in its true existence is a comprehension. With this distinction between conception and comprehension most people would deny, at once, the possibility of the latter as an act of human intelligence. Sensuous knowing—for the reason that it attributes validity to isolated objects—does not comprehend. Reflective knowing seizes the reciprocal relations, but not in the negative unity. Comprehension—whether one ever can arrive at it or not—should be the thought in its totality, wherein negative 237unity and moments are thought together. Thus a true comprehension is the thought of the self-determined, and we have not thoroughly comprehended any thing till we have traced it back through its various presuppositions to self-determination which must always be the form of the total. (See chapters IV. & V.)

The name “Idea” is reserved for the deepest thought of Philosophy.^[64] In comprehension we think a system of dependent moments in a negative unity. Thus in the comprehension the multiplicity of elements, thought in the moments, is destroyed in its negative unity, and there is, consequently, only one independent being or totality. Let, once, each of these moments develop to a totality, so that we have in each a repetition of the whole, and we shall have a comprehension of comprehensions—a system of totalities—and this is what Hegel means by “Idee,” or Idea. Plato arrives at this, but does not consistently develop it. He deals chiefly with the standpoint of comprehension, and hence has much that is dialectical. (The Dialectic is the process which arises when the abstract and incomplete is put under the form of the true, or the apodeictic. To refute a category of limited application, make it universal and it will contradict itself. Thus the “Irony” of Socrates consists in generously (!) assuming of any category all that his interlocutor wishes, and then letting it refute itself while he applies it in this and that particular instance with the air of one who sincerely believes in it. Humor is of this nature; the author assumes the validity of the character he is portraying in regard to his weak points, and then places him in positions wherein these weaknesses prove their true nature.) Aristotle, on the other hand, writes from the standpoint of the Idea constantly, and therefore treats his subjects as systematic totalities independent of each other; this gives the appearance of empiricism to his writings. The following illustration of the relation of comprehension to idea may be of assistance here:

Let any totality = T be composed of elements, phases or moments = a + b + c + d, &c. Each of these moments, a, b, c, &c., differs from the others and from the total; they are in a negative unity just as acid and base are, in a salt. The assertion of the negative unity cancels each of the moments. The negative unity adds to a the b, c, and d, which it lacks of the total; for a = T - b - c - &c.; and so too b = T - a - c - d - &c., and c = T - a - b - &c. Each demands all the rest to make its existence possible, just as the acid cannot exist if its tension is not balanced by a base. So far we have the Comprehension. If, now, we consider these moments as being able to develop, like the Monads of Leibnitz, we shall have the following result: a will absorb b + c + d + &c., and thus become a totality and a negative unity for itself; b may do likewise, and thus the others. Under this supposition we have, instead of the first series of moments (a + b + c + d + &c.) a new series wherein each moment has developed to a total by supplying its deficiencies thus: a b c d &c., + b a c d &c., + c a b d &c., + d a b c &c. In the new series, each term is a negative unity and a totality, and hence no longer exists in a tension, and no longer can be cancelled by the negative unity. Such a system of terms would offer us a manifold of individuals, and yet a profound unity. This is the unity of the Idea, and it affords a concrete multiplicity. Leibnitz gives to his Monads 238the power of reflection, so that each is the mirror of the universe; hence, in each is found the whole, and the Totality is endlessly repeated; “everywhere the one and the all”—and this is the “preestablished harmony,” no doubt. This is the highest point of view in philosophy—true multiplicity and true unity coexisting. Plato reaches it in his statement in the Timaeus, that “God has made the world most like himself, since he in nowise possesses envy.” The ultimate purpose of the universe is the reflection of God to himself. In this reflection, the existence of independent self-determining totalities is presupposed; to all else he is a negative unity, and therefore destructive. To the righteous, i. e. to those who perfect themselves by performing for themselves the function of negative unity, He says: “In you I am well pleased; I am reflected in you.” But to the wicked he is a consuming fire, for they do not assume the function of negative unity, but leave it to be used toward them from outside. Thus, too, the lower orders of existence perish through this, that their negative unity is not within but without. If God is conceived merely as the negative unity, and the creature not as self-determining, we have the standpoint of Pantheism. It is the Brahm which becomes all, and all returns into him again. If we had such a God we should only seem to be, for when he looked at us and “placed us under the form of Eternity” we should vanish. But in culture each of us absorbs his “not me,” just as “a,” in the illustration given above, became a b c d &c. Its a-ness was destroyed by its modifying (“rounding off”) its own peculiarity by the peculiarities of the rest, and thus becoming “cosmopolitan.” This is justly esteemed the profoundest and most sacred dogma of the Christian Religion when stated as the doctrine of the Trinity. The completest unity there obtains of independent individualities. All higher forms of spirit repeat the same thought. Government, e. g. is the Legislative, the Judiciary, and the Executive. Resist the Judiciary and it can, in the exercise of its function, assume executive powers. Each power is the entire organism viewed from the standpoint of one of its phases, just as a b c, b a c, c a b, are the same totality, but with different starting points assumed.

The self-determining being is the being which is its own other, and hence is its own negative unity. Thus it can never be a simple moment of a higher being, but is essentially a reflection of it. Recognition is the highest deed; it belongs to the standpoint of the Idea. Upon the plane of comprehension, the unity and multiplicity are mutually destructive; upon the plane of Idea they are mutually affirmative. The more creatures in whom he can be reflected, the more affirmations of God there are. The human spirit grows solely through recognition.

Remark. This is the only standpoint that is absolutely affirmative—all others being more or less negative, and, as a consequence, self-opposed. The stage of human culture is the most concrete illustration of it. Three human beings—A, B, and C—meet and form a community. As physical beings they exclude, each the others. The more one eats, the less the others have to eat. But spiritually it is the reverse: each has a different experience, and their giving and taking, instead of diminishing any one’s share, increases it. The experience of A is imparted to B, and conversely; and so also both share with C. By this, C grows through the culture of A and B, and becomes C B A; B develops to B C A, and A to A C B; all is gain: no loss, except of poverty. Limitation by another makes a finite being. But self-determination is the process of being one’s own “other” or limit, and hence all self-determined beings are totalities or microcosms, which, though independent, reflect each other, i. e. they make themselves in the same image. Hence the “Preëstablished Harmony” exists among such beings. Each is its own negative. Cognition or mind is the form of being which embodies this.

In culture we have an absolutely affirmative process, for the reason that the negative, involved in the cancelling of one’s own idiosyncracies, is a negative of what 239is already negative. Hence the unity of God is not in anywise impaired by the existence of a continually increasing number of perfected beings. In proportion to their perfection they reflect Him, and their complete self-determination is just that complete realization of Him which completes his self-consciousness. This has been called Pantheism by those who confound this standpoint with that of the Comprehension. Pantheism is impossible with a proper insight into the nature of self-consciousness. A blind force fulfilling its destiny, and giving rise to various orders of beings which are to be re-absorbed by it,—if one fancies this to be God, call him a Pantheist, for God is then merely a negative unity, and creation is only a series of moments. But if one considers God to be the Absolute Person, and deduces all Theology from His self-consciousness, as Hegel does, he cannot be called a Pantheist consistently by any one who believes in the Gospel of St. John. It is easy to see why Hegel has been and still is regarded as a Pantheist. When he asserts the self-consciousness of the creature to be the completion of the Divine self-consciousness, Hegel merely states the logical constituents of the Christian idea of the Trinity. The “creature” is the Son, which is “in the beginning.” All time must have presented and still presents the development of creatures into self-conscious beings. Our planet began a short time since to do this. “The fullness of time had come,” and the final stage of reflection (which must always have existed in the Universe) began on the earth, or, to state it theologically, “The Son was sent to redeem this world.” To think that Hegel could regard God as becoming conscious in time—as passing from an unconscious state to a conscious one—is to suppose him the weakest of philosophers. Self-consciousness cannot be “in time,” for it is the “form of eternity,” and thus time is not relative to it. The “fleeting show” of History does not touch the self-consciousness of God, nor does it touch any self-conscious being “whose soul is builded far from accident.”

The immediate object before the senses undergoes change; the real becomes potential, and that which was potential becomes real. Without the potentiality we could have had no change. At first we are apt to consider the real as the entire existence and to ignore the potential; but the potential will not be treated thus. Whatever a thing can become is as valid as what it is already. The properties of a thing by which it exists for us, are its relations to other beings, and hence are rather its deficiencies than its being per se. Thus the sharpness in the acid was pronounced to be the hunger of the same for alkali; the sharper it was, the louder was its call for alkali. Thus the very concreteness of a thing is rather the process of its potentialities. To illustrate this: we have a circle of possibilities belonging to a thing—only one of them is real at a time; it is, for instance, water, whose potentialities are vapor, liquid, and solid. Its reality is only a part of its total being, as in the case of water it was only one-third of itself at any given temperature. Yet the real is throughout qualified by the potential. In change, the real is being acted upon by the potential under the form of “outside influences.” The pyramid is not air, but the air continually acts upon it, and the pyramid is in a continual process of decomposition; its potentiality is continually exhibiting its nature. We know by seeing a thing undergo change what its potentialities are. In the process of change is manifested the activity of the potentialities which are thus negative to it. If a thing had no negative it would not change. The real is nothing but the surface upon which the potential writes its nature; it is the field of strife between the potentialities. The real persists in existence through the potential which is in continual process with it. Thus we are led to regard the product of the two as the constant. This we call Actuality.

The actual is a process, and is ever the same; its two sides, are the real and the potential, and the real is manifested no more and no less than the potentialities, in the process which constantly goes on. The real is annulled by the potential, and the latter becomes the real, only to be again replaced. If in the circle of possibilities which make up the entire being of a thing, that which is real bears a small proportion to the rest, the real is very unstable, for the potentialities are to that extent actively negative to it. But let the sphere of the real be relatively large, and we have a more stable being—there is less to destroy it and more to sustain it—it is a higher order of being. If the whole circle of its being were real it would coincide with its actuality, it would be self-related, exist for itself, and this would be the existence of the Idea.

The highest aim is toward perfection; and this is pursued in the cancelling of the finite, partial or incomplete, by adding to it its other or complement—that which it lacks of the Total or Perfect. Since this complement is the potential, and since this potential is and can be the only agent that acts upon and modifies the real, it follows that all process is pursuant of the highest aim; and since the actual is the process itself, it follows that the actual is the realization of the Best or of the Rational. A somewhat has a low order of existence if the sphere of its reality is small compared to that of its potentiality. But the lower its order the more swift and sure are the potentialities in their work. Hence no matter how bad anything is, the very best thing is being wrought upon it. Seize the moments of the world-history, and state precisely what they lacked of the complete realization of spirit, and one will see clearly that each phase perished by having just that added to it which it most of all needed.

To think according to Reason is to think things under the form of Eternity, says Spinoza (Res sub quadam specie aeternitatis percipere). The Form of Eternity is what we have found as the true actual. The Phenomenal world is the constant spectacle wherein each and all is placed under the form of Eternity. When this is done, all immediate (or mechanical) being appears in a state of transition; all mediated being appears as a merely relative, i. e. as existing in what lies beyond it; all absolutely mediated (i. e. self-determined) being appears in a state of development. In the first and second stages the individual loses its identity. In the third stage the process is one of unfolding, and hence the continual realizing of a more vivid personal identity. Thus the Form of Eternity is to the conscious being the realization of his Immortality.

To say that Shakespeare excels others by virtue of the genius which enables him to throw himself for the time completely into each of the characters he represents, is to say a very common-place thing, and yet it will bear repeating.

His spirit was so many-sided, so universal, that it was able to take all forms and perfectly to fit itself to each, so that he always gives us a consistent character. His personages are individuals whose every word agrees with every other they have spoken, and while the spirit which moves in them is Shakespeare, he is all, yet no one of them.

He does not consciously go to work to 241fashion a character, nor does he ask himself what that character shall say under the given circumstances, but his soul, being capable of all, takes on for the time the form of the character, and then speaks the things which are most natural to itself in that form. So entirely is this the case, that a comparison of the way in which one of his personages conducts himself under different circumstances, is sure to amaze us as we discover the fine touches by which the unity of the character is preserved. Goethe’s characters grow—are in a state of becoming. Shakespeare’s are grown: they are crystallized. The problem with Goethe is, the development of a character through growth; Shakespeare’s: given a certain character and a certain collision, how will the given character demean itself? The common man with an effort could tell what he himself would have done under such and such circumstances, but Shakespeare could have done all things, and grasping one side of himself he holds it, and shows it for one person, and another for another. He never confuses—never changes. The divine inspiration sways him. The power to do this, the Universal which can take on all and be all, is genius.

This is not claimed as new in any sense. I simply wish to illustrate its truth with regard to the suitors of Portia, by noticing how perfectly the feelings which each expresses after the result of his choice is apparent, are the outcome of the feelings which decided the choice.

The three sets of comments on the caskets and their mottoes, betray three entirely different men. Their minds move differently; they are actuated habitually by different motives, and the results of the same failure in Morocco and Arragon are noticeably different. They are placed in precisely the same circumstances. They are both disappointed, but observe how differently they demean themselves. Morocco wastes no words. His mood changes instantly from a doubting hope to despondency and heartfelt grief, so powerful that it deprives him of all speech. He goes at once. But Arragon speaks as if he had been deceived. First—“How much unlike art thou to Portia!” That is, I was led to suppose one thing; I have been misled. Then—“How much unlike my hopes!” but, indignation and wounded pride gaining the ascendency—“and my deservings!” He re-reads the motto, and grows more angry still. He has not been treated fairly, and at last, forgetting himself, he turns round to Portia with the fierce, direct question, “Are my deserts no better?” Portia shows her appreciation of his state of mind by her evasion, plainly intimating that he had gone too far in his manner of addressing her. His very words are rough and uncourteous in their abruptness. His question was rude because so personal. In his haste he has not even noticed the writing, which now surprises him, as, feeling her quiet rebuke, he turns back to the casket to hide his embarrassment, and he reads. During the reading he begins to be conscious that he has been angry without reason, and that he has not had control enough of himself to conceal the fact. That he is not a fool is shown by his consciousness that he has behaved like one in giving away to his temper, and as this consciousness begins to dawn on him, he is ashamed of himself for having been provoked, and desires to be gone as soon as possible. He has had a revelation of himself which is not agreeable, and he turns to depart, no longer angry with Portia, but so angry with himself that he almost forgets to bid the lady adieu. But suddenly reminded that she is there, he assumes again his usual, courtly, outside self, and half in apology for his anger and rudeness, which might have led her to suppose that he would forget his promise, half to recall himself to himself, he awkwardly ends the scene by assuring her that he means to keep his word.

Now, why should Morocco never for one instant lose his gentlemanly bearing, while Arragon so wholly forgets himself? Turn back to the comments before the choice, and we have the key at once.

In their remarks on the leaden chest we see at first how much more quickly than Morocco, Arragon rushes at conclusions. The former becomes at once thoughtful, and does not pass by even that unattractive metal without careful pausing. After 242reading all three mottoes once, he reads slowly the inscription on the leaden casket again, and begins to repeat it a second time. He feels thoroughly how much depends on the choice, and is self-distrustful. Finding that he can gain no suggestion from the lady, he commends himself for help to the gods before he proceeds. He is not the man to be daunted by a threat, and thinks he detects in that very threat a false ring. He is conscious of high motives, but not in vanity, and he decides, adversely, giving a reason. But Arragon, before surveying the whole ground, decides at once about the first he sees, and the summary way in which he dismisses all consideration of the leaden casket, savors strongly of self-esteem. There is a sort of bravado in the sudden words without a moment’s pause: “You shall look fairer ere I give or hazard!” The very use of “shall” with the second person, forces into view the will of the speaker. He does not turn to Portia. He is quite capable of directing his own actions without help from any god.

As Morocco considers the silver, the principal thing that attracts his attention is its “virgin hue.” (Remark that Arragon under the same circumstances calls it a “treasure house.”) He again begins thoughtfully to repeat; and again mark the self-distrust. There is an exquisitely delicate touch of this in—

Relying on the judgment of others, rather than on his own, but conscious too that there is good ground for the estimation in which he knows himself held, the chivalrous admiration with which he looks up to the woman he desires, comes in here suddenly with a doubt whether if all that is thought of him is deserved, it is enough to win a pearl of so great price. His conscious manhood refuses, however, to weaken itself by doubting, and he again repeats the clause on which he stopped before. He goes back to the thought of the estimation in which he is held; he thinks of his noble birth, of his princely fortune, of his graces, and qualities of breeding, and enumerating all these, he proves his title to a better nobility by the sudden thought that the love he bears her is enough to make him deserve her were she never so precious, and on that, and that alone, he rests his claim. But before deciding he will read again from the gold casket, and his exclamations on it are only a continuation of his previous thought. It seems perfectly plain to him that this must be the fortunate casket. In his generous love he forgets himself entirely, and as it were to show her how wholly he believes in her, he makes his selection here. Why should he be angry at the failure? He had no self-assertion to be wounded. If he deserved her, it was only because he loved her; and if he did not deserve her, it was only because she was more than any one could deserve.

As Arragon, after passing by the lead, turns to the gold, he begins to be a little more cautious, and repeats like Morocco. But his mind, instead of turning at once to Portia as the only prize in the world wholly desirable, begins from a lofty eminence of superiority to criticise others whom he calls the “fool multitude.” He will not choose what many men desire, because he prefers to keep out of the ranks. No democrat, but a proud aristocrat is he, and so the gold casket is set aside. After reading from the next, he begins to criticise again. It seems as if he stood outside of all the world and coolly reviewed it. On consideration he is quite sure that there is no danger of his losing his place even if “true honor were purchased by the merit of the wearer,” and basing his choice on his belief that he deserves success, he orders peremptorily the opening of the “treasure house.”

Is it not most natural that with such feelings, such self-complacency, he should be angry when he finds he has made a mistake? Nothing can be more galling to a proud spirit than to discover that the estimation set upon him by others is lower than that he sets upon himself.

It was not our purpose to compare Bassanio’s comments with the others. Let us say only that he evidently prizes sincerity above all other virtues, and prefers a leaden casket that is lead all through, to a golden one that is gold only on the outside, and so he wins the woman, who, as she shows us a moment afterwards, is sincere enough to deserve to be won.

[The following extracts from Goethe’s treatment of the master-piece of Leonardo da Vinci were read at a meeting of the St. Louis Art Society, pending the discussion of a fine engraving of this celebrated picture. The MS. kindly presented to us by the translator we print, in order to give to those unacquainted with the original an exhibition of Goethe’s thorough manner of penetrating the spirit of a work of art.—Editor.]

The Last Supper * * * was painted upon the wall of the monastery alle Grazie, at Milan. The place where the picture is painted must first be considered, for here the skill of the artist appears in its most brilliant light. What could be fitter and nobler for a refectory than a parting meal, which should be an object of reverence to the whole world for all future time. Several years ago, when travelling, we beheld this dining-room still undestroyed. Opposite the entrance on the narrow side, stood the table of the prior, on both sides of him the tables of the monks, all of which were raised a step from the floor—and when the visitor turned round, he saw painted on the fourth, above the doors, which are of but moderate height, a fourth table, and Christ and his disciples seated at it, as if they belonged to the society. At meal times it must have been a telling sight, when the tables of the prior and Christ looked upon each other as two opposite pictures, and the monks at their places found themselves enclosed between them. And just on this account the skill of the artist was compelled to take the existing tables of the monks as a pattern. Also, the table-cloth, with its folds still visible with its worked stripes and tied corners, was taken from the wash-room of the monastery. The plates, dishes, cups, and other vessels, are like those which the monks used.

Here was no attempt at imitating an uncertain antiquated costume; it would have been highly improper to stretch out the holy company upon cushions in this place. No, the picture must be brought near to the present; Christ must take his last supper with the Dominicans at Milan. Also, in many other respects, the painting must have produced a great effect; the thirteen figures about ten feet above the floor, one-half larger than life-size, take up the space of twenty-eight feet in length. Only two whole figures can be seen at the opposite ends of the table, the rest are half-figures; and here, too, the artist found his advantage in the necessity of the circumstances. Every moral expression belongs to the upper part of the body, and the feet in such cases are everywhere in the way. The artist has created here twelve half-figures, whose laps and knees are covered by the table and table-cloth, but whose feet are scarcely visible in the modest twilight beneath. Let us now imagine ourselves in the place; let us consider the moral repose which prevails in such a monastic dining-hall, and let us admire the artist who has infused into his picture, powerful emotion, passionate movement, and at the same time has kept his work within the bounds of Nature, and thus brings it in close contrast with the nearest reality.

The means of excitement by which the artist arouses the quiet holy group, are the words of the Master: “There is one among you who shall betray me!” They are spoken—the whole company falls into disquiet; but he inclines his head, with looks cast down; the whole attitude, the motion of the arms, of the hands, everything repeats with heavenly submission the unhappy words: Yes, it is not otherwise, there is one among you who shall betray me!

Before we go farther, we must point out a happy device whereby Leonardo principally enlivened his picture; it is the motion of the hands; this device, however, only an Italian could discover. With his nation, the whole body is full of animation; every limb participates in the expression of feeling, of passion, even of thought. By various motions and forms of the hand, he expresses: “What do I 244care!—Come hither!—This is a rogue! beware of him!—He shall not live long!—This is a main point!—Observe this well, my hearers!” To such a national peculiarity Leonardo, who observed every characteristic point with the closest attention, must have turned his careful eye. In this respect, the present picture is unique, and one can scarcely observe it enough. Every look and movement perfectly correspond, and at the same time there is a combined and contrasted position of the limbs, comprehensible at a glance, and wrought out in the most praiseworthy manner.

The figures on both sides of the Saviour may be considered by threes, and each of these again must be thought into a unity, placed in relation, and still held in connection with its neighbors. First, on the right side of Christ, are John, Judas, and Peter. Peter the most distant, in consonance with his violent character, when he hears the word of the Lord, hastens up behind Judas, who, looking up affrighted, bends forward over the table, and holds with his right hand firmly closed, the purse, but with the left makes an involuntary nervous movement, as if he would say: What’s that? What does that mean? In the meanwhile Peter has with his left hand seized the right shoulder of John, who is inclined towards him, and points to Christ, and at the same time urges the beloved disciple to ask who the traitor is. He strikes a knife-handle, which he holds in his right hand, inadvertently into the ribs of Judas, whereby the affrighted forward movement, which upsets the salt-cellar, is happily brought out. This group may be considered as the one which was first thought out by the artist; it is the most perfect.

If now upon the right hand of the Lord immediate vengeance is threatened, with a moderate degree of motion, there arises upon his left the liveliest horror and detestation of the treachery. James, the elder, bends back from fear, extends his arms, stares with his head bowed down as one who sees before him the monster which he has just heard of. Thomas peers from behind his shoulder, and approaching the Saviour, raises the index of his right hand to his forehead. Philip, the third of this group, rounds it off in the loveliest manner; he has risen, bends toward the Master, lays his hands upon his breast, and declares with the greatest clearness: Lord, it is not I! Thou knowest it! Thou seest my pure heart. It is not I!

And now, the last three figures of this group give us new material for thought; they talk with one another about the terrible thing which they have just heard. Matthew, with a zealous motion, turns his face to the left toward his two companions; his hands, on the contrary, he stretches with rapidity towards his master, and thus, by the most ingenious artifice, unites his own group with the previous one. Thaddeus shows the most violent surprise, doubt and suspicion; he has laid his left hand open upon the table, and has raised the right in a manner as if he intended to strike his left hand with the back of the right—a movement which one still sees in men of nature when they wish to express at an unexpected occurrence: Have I not said so? Have I not always supposed it? Simon sits at the end of the table, full of dignity—we therefore see his whole figure; he, the eldest of all, is clothed with rich folds; his countenance and movements show that he is astonished and reflecting, not excited, scarcely moved.

If we now turn our eyes to the opposite end of the table, we see Bartholomew, who stands upon his right foot, with the left crossed over it; he is supporting his inclined body by resting both hands firmly upon the table. He listens, probably to hear what John will find out from the Lord; for, in general, the incitement of the favorite disciple seems to proceed from this entire side. James, the younger, beside and behind Bartholomew, lays his left hand upon Peter’s shoulder, just as Peter lays his upon the shoulder of John, but James does so mildly, seeking explanation only, whereas Peter already threatens vengeance.

And thus, as Peter reaches behind Judas, so James the younger reaches behind Andrew, who, as one of the most important figures, shows with his half-raised arms, his expanded hands in front, a decided expression 245of horror, which appears only once in this picture, while in other works of less genius, and of less profound thought, it recurs unfortunately only too often.

Before we now come to imitations of our painting, of which the number amounts to about thirty, we must make some reference to the subject of copies generally. Such did not come into use until everybody confessed that art had reached its culminating point, whereupon, inferior talents, looking at the works of the greater masters, despaired of producing by their own skill anything similar, either in imitation of nature, or from the idea; and art, which now dwindled into mere handicraft, began to repeat its own creations. This inability on the part of most of the artists did not remain a secret to the lovers of art, who, not being able always to turn to the first masters, called upon and paid inferior talents, inasmuch as they preferred, in order not to receive something altogether destitute of skill, to order imitations of recognized works, with a view to being well served in some degree. This new procedure was favored, from reasons of illiberality and overhaste by owners no less than by artists, and art lowered itself advisedly by setting out with the purpose to copy.

In the fifteenth century, as well as in the previous one, artists entertained a high idea of themselves and their art, and did not readily content themselves with repeating the inventions of others; hence we find no real copies dating from that period—a circumstance to which every friend of the history of art will do well to give heed. Inferior arts no doubt made use of higher patterns for smaller works, as in the case of Niello and other enamelled work, and, of course, when from religious or other motives, a repetition was desired, people contented themselves with an accurate imitation, which only approximately expressed the movement and action of the original, without paying any close regard to form and color. Hence in the richest galleries we find no copy previous to the sixteenth century.

But now came the time, when, through the agency of a few extraordinary men—among whom our Leonardo must be reckoned and considered as the first—art in every one of its parts attained to perfection; people learned to see and to judge better, and now the desire for imitations of first-class work was not difficult to satisfy, particularly in those schools to which large numbers of scholars crowded, and in which the works of the master were greatly in request. And yet, at that time, this desire was confined to smaller works which could be easily compared with the originals and judged. As regards larger works, the case was quite different at that time from what it was at a later period, because the original cannot be compared with the copies, and also because such orders are rare. Thus, then, art, as well as its lovers, contented itself with copies on a small scale, and a great deal of liberty was allowed to the copyist, and the results of this arbitrary procedure showed themselves, in an overpowering degree, in the few cases in which copies on a large scale were desired. These indeed were generally copies of copies, and, what is more, generally executed from copies on a smaller scale, worked out far away from the original, often from mere drawings, or even perhaps from memory. Job-painters now increased by the dozen, and worked for lower prices; people made household ornaments of painting; taste died out; copies increased and darkened the walls of ante-chambers and stair-cases; hungry beginners lived on poor pay, by repeating the most important works on every scale; yea, many painters passed the whole of their lives in simply copying; but even then an amount of deviation appeared in every copy, either a notion of the person for whom it was painted, or a whim of the painter, or perhaps a presumptuous wish to be original.

In addition to this came the demand for worked tapestry, in which painting was not content to look dignified, except when tricked out with gold; and the most magnificent pictures were considered meagre and wretched, because they were grave and simple; therefore the copyist introduced buildings and landscapes in the background, 246ornaments on the dresses, aureoles or crowns around the heads, and further, strangly formed children, animals, chimeras, grotesques, and other fooleries. It often happened, also, that an artist, who believed in his own powers of invention, received by the will of a client who could not appreciate his capabilities, a commission to copy another person’s work, and since he did so with reluctance, he wished to appear original here and there, and therefore made changes or additions as knowledge, or perhaps vanity, suggested. Such occurrences took place of course according to the demands of place and time. Many figures were used for purposes quite different from those for which they had been intended by their first producers. Secular subjects were, by means of a few additions, changed into religious ones; heathen gods and heroes had to submit to be martyrs and evangelists. Often also, the artist, for instruction or exercise to himself, had copied some figure from a celebrated work, and now he added to it something of his own invention in order to turn it into a saleable picture. Finally, we may certainly ascribe a part of the corruption of art to the discovery and abuse of copper-plate engravings, which supplied job-painters with crowds of foreign inventions, so that no one any longer studied, and painting at last reached such a low ebb that it got mixed up with mechanical works. In the first place, the copper-plate engravings themselves were different from the originals, and whoever copied them multiplied the changes according to his own or other peoples’ conviction or whim. The same thing happened precisely in the case of drawings; artists took sketches of the most remarkable subjects in Rome and Florence, in order to produce arbitrary repetitions of them when they returned home.

In view of the above, we shall be able to judge what is to be expected, more or less, of copies of the Supper, although the earliest were executed contemporaneously; for the work made a great sensation, and other monasteries desired similar works. Of the numerous copies consulted by the author [Vossi] we shall occupy ourselves here with only three, since the copies at Weimar are taken from them; nevertheless, at the basis of these lies a fourth, of which, therefore, we must first speak. Marco d’Oggiono, a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci’s, though without any extensive talent, gained the praise of his school chiefly by his heads, although in them he is not always equal to himself. About the year 1510, he executed a copy on a small scale, intending to use it afterwards for a copy on a larger scale. It was, according to tradition, not quite accurate; he made it, however, the basis of a larger copy which is in the now suppressed monastery at Castellazzo, likewise in the dining-hall of the monks of those days. Everything about it shows careful work; nevertheless the usual arbitrariness prevails in the details. And although Vossi has not been able to say much in its praise, he does not deny that it is a remarkable monument, and that the character of several of the heads, in which the expression is not exaggerated, is deserving of praise. Vossi has copied it, and on comparison of the three copies we shall be able to pronounce judgment upon it from our own observation.

A second copy, of which we likewise have the heads copied before us, is found in fresco on the wall at Ponte Capriasca; it is referred to the year 1565, and ascribed to Pierro Lovino. Its merits we shall learn in the sequel; it has the peculiarity that the names of the figures are written underneath, a piece of foresight which aids us in arriving at a correct characterization of the different physiognomies.

The gradual destruction of the original we have described in sufficient detail, and it was already in a very wretched condition when, in 1612, Cardinal Frederico Borromeo, a zealous friend of art, endeavored to prevent the entire loss of the work, and commissioned a Milanese, Andrea Bianchi, surnamed Vespino, to execute a full-sized copy. This artist first tried his skill on a few of the heads; being successful in these, he proceeded and copied the whole of the figures, separately however, and afterwards put them together with the 247greatest possible care; the picture is at present to be found in the Ambrosiana library at Milan, and lies mainly at the basis of the most recent copy, executed by Vossi. This was executed on the following occasion.

The Kingdom of Italy was decreed, and Prince Eugène, following the example of Luigi Sforza, wished to glorify the beginning of his reign by patronizing the fine arts. Luigi had ordered a representation of the Last Supper of Leonardo; Eugène resolved to restore, as far as possible, the painting that had been going to wreck for three hundred years in a new picture, which, in order that it might be indestructible, was to be done in mosaic, for which preparation had been made in an already existing institution.

Vossi immediately receives the commission, and commences in the beginning of May, 1807. He finds it advisable to execute a full-sized cartoon, takes up anew the studies of his youth, and applies himself entirely to Leonardo, studies his art-remains and his writings, particularly the latter, because he is persuaded that a man who has produced such splendid works must have worked on the most decided and advantageous principles. He had made drawings of the heads in the copy at Ponte Capriasca, as well as of some other parts of it, likewise of the heads and hands of the Castellazzo copy, and of that of Bianchi. Then he makes drawings of everything coming from Da Vinci himself, and even of what comes from some of his contemporaries. Moreover he looks about for all the extant copies, and succeeds in making more or less acquaintance with twenty-seven; drawings and manuscripts of Da Vinci’s are kindly sent to him from all quarters. In the working out of his cartoon, he adheres principally to the Ambrosiana copy; it alone is as large as the original. Bianchi, by means of thread-nets and transparent paper, had endeavored to give a most accurate copy of the original, which, although already very much injured, was not yet painted over.

In the end of October, 1807, the cartoon is ready; canvass grounded uniformly in one piece, and the whole immediately sketched out. Hereupon, in order in some measure to regulate his tints, Vossi painted the small portion of sky and landscape, which, on account of the depth and purity of the colors in the original, had still remained fresh and brilliant. Hereupon he paints the head of Christ and those of the three apostles at his left, and as for the dresses, he first paints those about whose colors he had first arrived at certainly, with a view to selecting the rest according to the principles of the master and his own taste. Thus he covered the whole of the canvass, guided by careful reflection, and kept his colors of uniform height and strength.

Unfortunately, in this damp, deserted place, he was seized with an illness which compelled him to put a stop to his exertions; nevertheless, he employed this interval in arranging drawings, copper-plate engravings, partly with a view to the Supper itself, partly to other works of the master; at the same time he was favored by fortune, which brought him a collection of drawings, purporting to come from Cardinal Cæsar Monti, and containing, among other treasures, remarkable productions of Leonardo himself. He studied even the authors contemporaneous with Leonardo, in order to make use of their opinions and wishes, and looked about him for everything that could further his design. Thus he took advantage of his sickness, and at last attained strength to set about his work anew.

No artist or friend of art will leave unread the account of how he managed the details, how he thought out the characters of the faces and their expression, and even the motions of the hands, and how he represented them. In the same manner he thinks out the dishes, the room, the back-ground, and shows that he has not decided upon any part without the strongest reasons. What care he takes about representing the feet under the table in correct attitudes, because this portion of the original had long been destroyed, and in the copies had been carelessly treated!

Of the relation of the two copies—the 248merits of the third can be shown only to the eye, not to the mind in words—we shall state in a few words the most essential and most decided points, until we shall be fortunate enough, as we shall perhaps one day be, to be able to lay copies of these interesting sheets before the friends of art.

St. Bartholomew, manly youth, sharp profile, compressed, clear face, eyelid and brow pressed down, mouth closed, as if listening with suspicion, a character completely circumscribed within itself. In Vespino’s copy no trace of individual characteristic features, a general kind of drawing-book face, listening with open mouth. Vossi has approved of this opening of the lips, and retained it, a procedure to which we should be unable to lend our assent.

St. James the younger, likewise profile, relationship to Christ unmistakable, receives from the protruded, slightly opened lips, something individual, which again cancels this similarity. According to Vespino, almost an ordinary, academical Christ, the mouth opened rather in astonishment than in inquiry. Our assertion that Bartholomew must have his mouth closed, receives support from the fact that his neighbor has his mouth open. Such a repetition Leonardo would never have endured; on the contrary, the next figure,

St. Andrew has his mouth shut. Like persons advanced in life, he presses the lower lip rather against the upper. In the copy of Marco, this head has something peculiar, not to be expressed in words; the eyes are introverted; the mouth, though shut, is still naïve. The outline of the left side against the back ground forms a beautiful silhouette; enough of the other side of the forehead (eye, nose and beard) is seen to give the head a roundness and a peculiar life; on the contrary, Vespino suppresses the left eye altogether, but shows so much of the left temple and of the side of the beard as to produce in the uplifted face a full bold expression, which is indeed striking, but which would seem more suitable to clenched fists than to open hands stretched forward.

Judas locked up within himself, frightened, looking anxiously up and back, profile strongly dented, not exaggerated, by no means an ugly formation; for good taste would not tolerate any real monster in the proximity of pure and upright men. Vespino, on the other hand, has actually represented such a monster, and it cannot be denied that, regarded by itself, this head has much merit; it expresses vividly a mischievously bold malignity, and would make itself eminently conspicuous in a mob triumphing over an Ecce Homo, and crying out “Crucify! crucify!” It might be made to pass for Mephistopheles in his most devilish moment. But of affright or dread, combined with dissimulation, indifference and contempt, there is not a trace; the bristly hair fits in with the tout ensemble admirably; its exaggeration, however, is matched only by the force and violence of the rest of Vespino’s heads.

St. Peter.—Very problematical features. Even in Marco, it is merely an expression of pain; of wrath or menace there is no sign; there is also a certain anxiety expressed, and here Leonardo may not have been at one even with himself; for cordial sympathy with a beloved master, and threatening against a traitor, are with difficulty united in one countenance. Nevertheless, Cardinal Borromeo asserts that he saw such a miracle in his time. However pleasant it might be to believe this, we have reason to suppose that the art-loving cardinal expressed his own feeling rather than what was in the picture; for otherwise we should be unable to defend our friend Vespino, whose Peter has an unpleasant expression. He looks like a stern Capuchin monk, whose Lent sermon is intended to rouse sinners. It is strange that Vespino has given him bushy hair, since the Peter of Marco shows a beautiful head of short, curled tresses.

St. John is represented by Marco in the spirit of Da Vinci; the beautiful roundish face, somewhat inclined to oval, the hair smooth towards the top of the head, but curling gently downwards, particularly where it bends round Peter’s inserted hand, are most lovely; what we see of the dark of the eye is turned away from Peter—a marvellously fine piece of observation, 249in that while he is listening with the intensest feeling to the secret speech of his neighbor, he turns away his eyes from him. According to Vespino, he is a comfortable-looking, quiet, almost sleepy youth, without any trace of sympathy.

We turn now to the left side of Christ, in order that the figure of the Saviour may come last in our description.

St. Thomas’ head and right hand, whose upraised fore-finger is bent slightly toward his brow to imply reflection. This movement, which is so much in keeping with a person who is suspicious or in doubt, has been hitherto misunderstood, and a hesitating disciple looked upon as threatening. In Vespino’s copy, likewise, he is reflective enough, but as the artist has again left out the retreating right eye, the result is a perpendicular, monotonous profile, without any remnant of the protruding, searching elements of the older copies.

St. James the Elder.—The most violent agitation of the features, the most gaping mouth, horror in his eye; an original venture of Leonardo’s; yet we have reason to believe that this head, likewise, has been remarkably succesful with Marco. The working out is magnificent, whereas in the copy of Vespino all is lost; attitude, manner, mien, everything has vanished, and dwindles down into a sort of indifferent generality.

St. Philip, amiable and invaluable, resembles Raffaelle’s youths, collected on the left side of The School of Athens about Bramante. Vespino has, unfortunately, again suppressed the right eye, and as he could not deny that there was something more than profile in the thing, he has produced an ambiguous, strangely inclined head.

St. Matthew, young, of undesigning nature, with curly hair, an anxious expression in the slightly opened mouth, in which the teeth, which are visible, express a sort of slight ferocity in keeping with the violent movement of the figure. Of all this nothing remains in Vespino; he gazes before him, stiff and expressionless; one does not receive the remotest notion of the violent movement of the body.

St. Thaddeus, according to Marco, is likewise quite an invaluable head; anxiety, suspicion, vexation, are expressed in every feature. The unity of this agitation of the countenance is extremely fine, and is entirely in keeping with the movement of the hands which we have already explained. In Vespino, everything is again reduced to a general level; he has also made the head still more unmeaning by turning it too much towards the spectator, whereas, according to Marco, hardly a quarter of the left side is seen, whereby the suspicious, askance-looking element is admirably portrayed.

St. Simon the Elder, wholly in profile, placed opposite the likewise pure profile of young Matthew. In him the protruding under lip which Leonardo had such a partiality for in old faces, is most exaggerated; but, along with the grave, overhanging brow, produces the most wonderful effect of vexation and reflection, in sharp contrast with the passionate movement of young Matthew. In Vespino he is a good-natured old man in his dotage, incapable of taking any interest in even the most important occurrence that might take place in his presence.

Having thus now thrown light upon the apostles, we turn to the form of Christ himself. And here again we are met by the legend, that Leonardo was unable to finish either Christ or Judas, which we readily believe, since, from his method, it was impossible for him to put the last touch to those two extremes of portraiture. Wretched enough, in the original, after all the darkening processes it had to undergo, may have been the appearance presented by the features of Christ, which were only sketched. How little Vespino found remaining, may be gleaned from the fact that he brought out a colossal head of Christ, quite at variance with the purpose of Da Vinci, without paying the least attention to the inclination of the head, which ought of necessity to have been made parallel with the inclination of John’s. Of the expression we shall say nothing; the features are regular, good-natured, intelligent, like those we are accustomed to see in Christ, but without the very smallest particle of sensibility, so that we should 250almost be unable to tell what New Testament story this head would be welcome to.

We are here met and aided by the circumstance that connoisseurs assert, that Leonardo himself painted the head of the Saviour at Castellazzo, and ventured to do in another’s work what he had not been willing to undertake in his own principal figure. As we have not the original before us, we must say of the copy that it agrees entirely with the conception which we form of a noble man whose breast is weighed down by poignant suffering of soul, which he has endeavored to alleviate by a familiar word, but has thereby only made matters worse instead of better.

By these processes of comparison, then, we have come sufficiently near the method of this extraordinary artist, such as he has clearly explained and demonstrated it in writings and pictures, and fortunately it is in our power to take a step still further in advance. There is, namely, preserved in the Ambrosiana library a drawing incontestably executed by Leonardo, upon bluish paper, with a little white and colored chalk. Of this the chevalier Vossi has executed the most accurate fac-simile, which is also before us. A noble youthful face, drawn from nature, evidently with a view to the head of Christ at the Supper. Pure, regular features, smooth hair, the head bent to the left side, the eyes cast down, the mouth half opened, the tout ensemble brought into the most marvellous harmony by a slight touch of sorrow. Here indeed we have only the man who does not conceal a suffering of soul, but the problem, how, without extinguishing this promise, at the same time to express sublimity, independence, power, the might of godhead, is one which even the most gifted earthly pencil might well find hard to solve. In this youthful physiognomy which hovers between Christ and John, we see the highest attempt to hold fast by nature when the supermundane is in question.

[In the following article the passages quoted are turned into English, and the original French is omitted for the sake of brevity and lucid arrangement. As the work reviewed is accessible to most readers, a reference to the pages from which we quote will answer all purposes.—Editor.]

Since the death of Hegel in 1831, his philosophy has been making a slow but regular progress into the world at large. At home in Germany it is spoken of as having a right wing, a left wing, and a centre; its disciples are very numerous when one counts such widely different philosophers as Rosenkrantz, Michelet, Kuno Fischer, Erdmann, J. H. Fichte, Strauss, Feuerbach, and their numerous followers. Sometimes when one hears who constitute a “wing” of the Hegelian school, he is reminded of the “lucus a non” principle of naming, or rather of misnaming things. But Hegelianism has, as we said, made its way into other countries. In France we have the Æsthetics “partly translated and partly analyzed,” by Professor Bénard; the logic of the small Encyclopædia, translated with copious notes, by Professor Vera, who has gone bravely on, with what seems with him to be a work of love, and given us the “Philosophy of Nature” and the “Philosophy of Spirit,” and promises us the “Philosophy of Religion”—all accompanied with abundant introduction and commentary. We hear of others very much influenced by Hegel: M. Taine, for example, who writes brilliant essays. In English, too, we have a translation of the “Philosophy of History,” (in Bohn’s Library;) a kind of translation and analysis of the first part of the third volume of the Logic, (Sloman & Wallon, London, 1855); and an extensive and elaborate work on “The Secret of Hegel,” by James Hutchison Stirling. We must not forget to mention a translation of Schwegler’s History of Philosophy—a work drawn principally 251from Hegel’s labors—by our American Professor Seelye: and also (just published) a translation of the same book by the author of the “Secret of Hegel.” Articles treating of Hegel are to be found by the score—seek them in every text-book on philosophy, in every general Cyclopædia, and in numerous works written for or against German Philosophy. Some of these writers tell us in one breath that Hegel was a man of prodigious genius, and in the next they convict him of confounding the plainest of all common sense distinctions. Some of them find him the profoundest of all thinkers, while others cannot “make a word of sense out of him.” There seems to be a general understanding in this country and England on one point: all agree that he was a Pantheist. Theodore Parker, Sir William Hamilton, Mansell, Morell, and even some of the English defenders of Hegelianism admit this. Hegel holds, say some, that God is a becoming; others say that he holds God to be pure being. These men are careful men apparently—but only apparently, for it must be confessed that if Hegel has written any books at all, they are, every one of them, devoted to the task of showing the inadequacy of such abstractions when made the highest principle of things.

The ripest product of the great German movement in philosophy, which took place at the beginning of this century, Hegel’s philosophy is likewise the concretest system of thought the world has seen. This is coming to be the conviction of thinkers more and more every day as they get glimpses into particular provinces of his labor. Bénard thinks the Philosophy of Art the most wonderful product of modern thinking, and speaks of the Logic—which he does not understand—as a futile and perishable production. Another thinks that his Philosophy of History is immortal, and a third values extravagantly his Philosophy of Religion. But the one who values his Logic knows how to value all his labors. The History of Philosophy is the work that impresses us most with the unparalleled wealth of his thought; he is able to descend through all history, and give to each philosopher a splendid thought as the centre of his system, and yet never is obliged to confound different systems, or fail in showing the superior depth of modern thought. While we are admiring the depth and clearness of Pythagoras, we are surprised and delighted to find the great thought of Heraclitus, but Anaxagoras is a new surprise; the Sophists come before us bearing a world-historical significance, and Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle lead us successively to heights such as we had not dreamed attainable by any thinking.

But thought is no immediate function, like the process of breathing or sleeping, or fancy-making: it is the profoundest mediation of spirit, and he who would get an insight into the speculative thinkers of whatever time, must labor as no mere flesh and blood can labor, but only as spirit can labor: with agony and sweat of blood. A philosophy which should explain the great complex of the universe, could hardly be expected to be transparent to uncultured minds at the first glance. Thus it happens that many critics give us such discouraging reports upon their return from a short excursion into the true wonder-land of philosophy. The Eternal Verities are miraculous only to those eyes which have gazed long upon them after shutting out the glaring sunlight of the senses.

Those who criticise a philosophy must imply a philosophical method of their own, and thus measure themselves while they measure others. A literary man who criticises Goethe, or Shakespeare, or Homer, is very apt to lay himself bare to the shaft of the adversary. There are, however, in our time, a legion of writers who pass judgment as flippantly upon a system of the most comprehensive scope—and which they confess openly their inability to understand—as upon a mere opinion uttered in a “table-talk.” Even some men of great reputation give currency to great errors. Sir William Hamilton, in his notes to Reid’s Philosophy of “Touch,” once quoted the passage from the second part of Fichte’s Bestimmung des Menschen, (wherein onesided idealism is pushed to its downfall,) in order to show that 252Fichte’s Philosophy ended in Nihilism. The Bestimmung des Menschen was a mere popular writing in which Fichte adopted the Kantian style of exhibiting the self-refutation of sense and reflection, in order to rest all ultimate truth in the postulates of the Practical Reason. Accordingly he shows the practical results of his own system in the third part of the work in question, and enforces the soundest ethical views of life. He never thought of presenting his theoretical philosophy in that work. Thus, too, in Hamilton’s refutation of Cousin and Schelling: he polemicises against all “Doctrines of the Absolute,” saying that to think is to limit; hence to think God would be to determine or limit Him; and hence is inferred the impossibility of thinking God as he truly is. This, of course, is not pushed to its results by his followers, for then its skeptical tendency would become obvious. Religion demands that we shall do the Will of God; this Will must, therefore, be known. But, again, Will is the realization or self-determination of one’s nature—from it the character proceeds. Thus in knowing God’s will we know his character or nature. If we cannot do this at all, no religion is possible; and in proportion as Religion is possible, the Knowledge of God is possible.

If it be said that the Absolute is unthinkable, in this assertion it is affirmed that all predicates or categories of thought are inapplicable to the Absolute, for to think is to predicate of some object, the categories of thought; and in so far as these categories apply, to that extent is the Absolute thinkable. Since Existence is a category of thought, it follows from this position that to predicate existence of the Absolute is impossible; “a questionable predicament” truly for the Absolute. According to this doctrine—that all thought is limitation—God is made Pure Being, or Pure Thought. This is also the result of Indian Pantheism, and of all Pantheism; this doctrine concerning the mere negative character of thought, in fact, underlies the Oriental tenet that consciousness is finitude. To be consistent, all Hamiltonians should become Brahmins, or, at least, join some sect of modern Spiritualists, and thus embrace a religion that corresponds to their dogma. However, let us not be so unreasonable as to insist upon the removal of inconsistency—it is all the good they have.

After all this preliminary let us proceed at once to examine the work of Professor Paul Janet, which we have named at the head of our article: “Essai sur la dialectique dans Platon et dans Hegel.”

After considering the Dialectic of Plato in its various aspects, and finding that it rests on the principle of contradiction, M. Janet grapples Hegel, and makes, in order, the following points:

I. Terminology.—He tells us that the great difficulty that lies in the way of comprehending German Philosophy is the abstract terminology employed, which is, in fact, mere scholasticism preserved and applied to modern problems. No nation of modern times, except the Germans, have preserved the scholastic form. He traces the obscurity of modern German philosophy to “Aristotle subtilized by the schools.” This he contrasts with the “simple and natural philosophy of the Scotch.” [This “simplicity” arises from the fact that the Scotch system holds that immediate sensuous knowing is valid. Of course this implies that they hold that the immediate existence of objects is a true existence—that whatever is, exists thus and so without any further grounds. This is the denial of all philosophy, for it utterly ignores any occasion whatever for it. But it is no less antagonistic to the “natural science” of the physicist: he, the physicist, finds the immediate object of the senses to be no permanent or true phase, but only a transitory one; the object is involved with other beings—even the remotest star—and changes when they change. It is force and matter (two very abstract categories) that are to him the permanent and true existence. But force and matter cannot be seen by the senses; they can only be thought.] Our author proceeds to trace the resemblance between Hegel and Wolff: both consider and analyze the pure concepts, beginning with Being. To M. Janet this resemblance goes for much, but he admits that “Hegel 253has modified this order (that of Wolff) and rendered it more systematic.” If one asks “How more systematic?” he will not find the answer. “The scholastic form is retained, but not the thought,” we are told. That such statements are put forward, even in a book designed for mere surface-readers may well surprise us. That the mathematical method of Wolff or Spinoza—a method which proceeds by definitions and external comparison, holding meanwhile to the principle of contradiction—that such a method should be confounded with that of Hegel which proceeds dialectically, i. e. through the internal movement of the categories to their contradiction or limit, shows the student of philosophy at once that we are dealing with a littérateur, and not with a philosopher. So far from retaining the form of Wolff it is the great object of Hegel (see his long prefaces to the “Logik” and the “Phänomenologie des Geistes”) to supplant that form by what he considers the true method—that of the objective itself. The objective method is to be distinguished from the arbitrary method of external reflection which selects its point of view somewhere outside of the object considered, and proceeds to draw relations and comparisons which, however edifying, do not give us any exhaustive knowledge. It is also to be distinguished from the method of mere empirical observation which collects without discrimination a mass of characteristics, accidental and necessary, and never arrives at a vivifying soul that unites and subordinates the multiplicity. The objective method seizes somewhat in its definition and traces it through all the phases which necessarily unfold when the object is placed in the form of relation to itself. An object which cannot survive the process of self-relation, perishes, i. e. it leads to a more concrete object which is better able to endure. This method, as we shall presently see, is attributed to Plato by M. Janet.

The only resemblance that remains to be noted between the scholastics and Hegel is this: they both treat of subtle distinctions in thought, while our modern “common sense” system goes only so far as to distinguish very general and obvious differences. This is a questionable merit, and the less ado made about it by such as take pride in it, the better for them.

Our author continues: “The principal difficulty of the system of Kant is our ignorance of the ancient systems of logic. The Critique of Pure Reason is modelled on the scholastic system.” Could we have a more conclusive refutation of this than the fact that the great professors of the ancient systems grossly misunderstand Kant, and even our essayist himself mistakes the whole purport of the same! Hear him contrast Kant with Hegel: “Kant sees in Being only the form of Thought, while Hegel sees in Thought only the form of Being.” This he says is the great difference between the Germans and French, interpreting it to mean: “that the former pursues the route of deduction, and the latter that of experience”!

He wishes to consider Hegel under three heads: 1st, The Beginning; 2d, the dialectical deduction of the Becoming, and 3d, the term Dialectic.

II. The Beginning.—According to M. Janet, Hegel must have used this syllogism in order to find the proper category with which to commence the Logic.

(a) The Beginning should presuppose nothing;

(b) Pure Being presupposes nothing;

(c) Hence Pure Being is the Beginning.

This syllogism he shows to be inconclusive: for there are two beginnings, (a) in the order of knowledge, (b) in the order of existence. Are they the same? He answers: “No, the thinking being—because it thinks—knows itself before it knows the being which it thinks.” Subject and object being identical in that act, M. Janet in effect says, “it thinks itself before it thinks itself”—an argument that the scholastics would hardly have been guilty of! The beginning is really made, he says, with internal or external experience. He quotes (page 316) from Hegel a passage asserting that mediation is essential to knowing. This he construes to mean that “the determined or concrete (the world of experience) is the essential condition of knowing!” 254Through his misapprehension of the term “mediation,” we are prepared for all the errors that follow, for “mediation in knowing” means with Hegel that it involves a process, and hence can be true only in the form of a system. The “internal and external experience” appertains to what Hegel calls immediate knowing. It is therefore not to be wondered at that M. Janet thinks Hegel contradicts himself by holding Pure Being to be the Beginning, and afterwards affirming mediation to be necessary. He says (page 317), “In the order of knowing it is the mediate which is necessarily first, while in the order of existence the immediate is the commencement.” Such a remark shows him to be still laboring on the first problem of Philosophy, and without any light, for no Speculative Philosopher (like Plato, Aristotle, Leibnitz, or Hegel) ever held that Pure Being—or the immediate—is the first in the order of existence, but rather that God or Spirit (self-thinking, “pure act,” Νοῦς, “Logos,” &c.) is the first in the order of existence. In fact, M. Janet praises Plato and Aristotle for this very thing at the end of his volume, and thereby exhibits the unconsciousness of his procedure. Again, “The pure thought is the end of philosophy, and not its beginning.” If he means by this that the culture of consciousness ends in arriving at pure thought or philosophy, we have no objection to offer, except to the limiting of the application of the term Philosophy to its preliminary stage, which is called the Phenomenology of Spirit. The arrival at pure thought marks the beginning of the use of terms in a universal sense, and hence is the beginning of philosophy proper. But M. Janet criticises the distinction made by Hegel between Phenomenology and Psychology, and instances Maine de Biran as one who writes Psychology in the sense Hegel would write Phenomenology. But M. Biran merely manipulates certain unexplained phenomena,—like the Will, for example—in order to derive categories like force, cause, &c. But Hegel shows in his Phenomenology the dialectical unfolding of consciousness through all its phases, starting from the immediate certitude of the senses. He shows how certitude becomes knowledge of truth, and wherein it differs from it. But M. Janet (p. 324) thinks that Hegel’s system, beginning in empirical Psychology, climbs to pure thought, “and then draws up the ladder after it.”

III. The Becoming.—We are told by the author that consciousness determining itself as Being, determines itself as a being, and not as the being. If this be so we cannot think pure being at all. Such an assertion amounts to denying the universal character of the Ego. If the position stated were true, we could think neither being nor any other object.

On page 332, he says, “This contradiction (of Being and non-being) which in the ordinary logic would be the negative of the posited notion, is, in the logic of Hegel, only an excitant or stimulus, which somehow determines spirit to find a third somewhat in which it finds the other conciliated.” He is not able to see any procedure at all. He sees the two opposites, and thinks that Hegel empirically hunts out a concept which implies both, and substitutes it for them. M. Janet thinks (pp. 336-7) that Hegel has exaggerated the difficulties of conceiving the identity of Being and nought. (p. 338) “If the difference of Being and nought can be neither expressed nor defined, if they are as identical as different—if, in short, the idea of Being is only the idea of the pure void, I will say, not merely that Being transforms itself into Nothing, or passes into its contrary; I will say that there are not two contraries, but only one term which I have falsely called Being in the thesis, but which is in reality only Non-being without restriction—the pure zero.” He quotes from Kuno Fischer (p. 340) the following remarks applicable here:

“If Being were in reality the pure void as it is ordinarily taken, Non-being would not express the same void a second time; but it would then be the non-void, i. e. the abhorrence of the void, or the immanent contradiction of the void.”—(and again from his “Logik und Metaphysik” II. § 29): “The logical Being contradicts itself; for thought vanishes in the immovable repose of Being. But as Being comes only from thought (for it is the act of thought), it contradicts thus itself in destroying thought. Consequently thought manifests 255itself as the negation of Being—that is to say, as Non-being. The Non-being (logical) is not the total suppression of Being—the pure zero—it is not the mathematical opposition of Being to itself as a negative opposed to a positive, but it is the dialectical negative of itself, the immanent contradiction of Being. Being contradicts itself, hence is Non-being, and in the concept of Non-being, thought discovers the immanent contradiction of Being—thought manifests itself at first as Being, and in turn the logical Being manifests itself as Non-being; thought can hence say, “I am the Being which is not.”

“Such,” continues our author, “is the deduction of M. Fischer. It seems to me very much inferior in clearness to that of Hegel.” How he could say this is very mysterious when we find him denying all validity to Hegel’s demonstration. Although Fischer’s explanation is mixed—partly dialectical and partly psychological—yet, as an explanation, it is correct. But as psychology should not be dragged into Logic, which is the evolution of the forms of pure thinking, we must hold strictly to the dialectic if we would see the “Becoming.” The psychological explanation gets no further than the relation of Being and nought as concepts. The Hegelian thought on this point is not widely different from that of Gorgias, as given us by Sextus Empiricus, nor from that of Plato in the Sophist. Let us attempt it here:

Being is the pure simple; as such it is considered under the form of self-relation. But as it is wholly undetermined, and has no content, it is pure nought or absolute negation. As such it is the negation by itself or the negation of itself, and hence its own opposite or Being. Thus the simple falls through self-opposition into duality, and this again becomes simple if we attempt to hold it asunder, or give it any validity by itself. Thus if Being is posited as having validity in and by itself without determination, (omnis determinatio est negatio), it becomes a pure void in nowise different from nought, for difference is determination, and neither Being nor nought possess it. What is the validity of the nought? A negative is a relative, and a negative by itself is a negative related to itself, which is a self-cancelling. Thus Being and nought, posited objectively as having validity, prove dissolving forms and pass over into each other. Being is a ceasing and nought is a beginning, and these are the two forms of Becoming. The Becoming, dialectically considered, proves itself inadequate likewise.

IV. The Dialectic.—To consider an object dialectically we have merely to give it universal validity; if it contradicts itself then, we are not in anywise concerned for the result; we will simply stand by and accept the result, without fear that the true will not appear in the end. The negative turned against itself makes short work of itself; it is only when the subjective reflection tries to save it by hypotheses and reservations that a merely negative result is obtained.

(Page 369): “In Spinozism the development of Being is Geometric; in the System of Hegel it is organic.” What could have tempted him to use these words, it is impossible to say, unless it was the deep-seated national proclivity for epigrammatic statements. This distinction means nothing less (in the mouth of its original author) than what we have already given as the true difference between Wolff’s and Hegel’s methods; but M. Janet has long since forgotten his earlier statements. (Page 369) He says, “Hegel’s method is a faithful expression of the movement of nature,” from which he thinks Hegel derived it empirically!

On page 372 he asks: “Who proves to us that the dialectic stops at Spirit as its last term? Why can I not conceive a spirit absolutely superior to mine, in whom the identity between subject and object, the intelligible and intelligence would be more perfect than it is with this great Philosopher [Hegel]? ***** In fact, every philosopher is a man, and so far forth is full of obscurity and feebleness.” Spirit is the last term in philosophy for the reason that it stands in complete self-relation, and hence contains its antithesis within itself; if it could stand in opposition to anything else, then it would contain a contradiction, and be capable of transition into a higher. M. Janet asks in effect: “Who proves that the dialectic stops at God as the highest, and why cannot I conceive a higher?” Judging from his attempt 256at understanding Hegel, however, he is not in a fair way to conceive “a spirit in whom the identity between subject and object” is more perfect than in Hegel. “What hinders” is his own culture, his own self; “Du gleichst dem Geist den du begreifst, nicht mir,” said the World-spirit to Faust.

He asks, (p. 374): “When did the ‘pure act’ commence?” From Eternity; it always commences, and is always complete, says Hegel. “According to Hegel, God is made from nought, by means of the World.” Instead of this, Hegel holds that God is self-created, and the world eternally created by him (the Eternally-begotten Son). “What need has God of Nature?” God is Spirit; hence conscious; hence he makes himself an object to himself; in this act he creates nature; hence Nature is His reflection. (P. 386): “The Absolute in Hegel is spirit only on condition that it thinks, and thinks itself; hence it is not essentially Spirit, but only accidentally.” To “think itself” is to be conscious, and, without this, God would have no personality; and hence if Hegel were to hold any other doctrine than the one attributed to him, he would be a Pantheist. But these things are not mere dogmas with Hegel; they appear as the logical results of the most logical of systems. “But in Plato, God is a Reason in activity, a living thought.” M. Janet mentions this to show Plato’s superiority; he thinks that it is absurd for Hegel to attribute thinking to God, but thinks the same thing to be a great merit in Plato. (P. 392): “Behold the Platonic deduction [or dialectic]: being given a pure idea, he shows that this idea, if it were all alone, [i. e. made universal, or placed in self-relation, or posited as valid for itself,] would be contradictory of itself, and consequently could not be. Hence, if it exists, it is on condition that it mingles with another idea. Take, for example, the multiple: by itself, it loses itself in the indiscernible, for it would be impossible without unity.” This would do very well for a description of the Dialectic in Hegel if he would lay more stress on the positive side of the result. Not merely does the “pure idea mingle with another”—i. e. pass over to its opposite—but it returns into itself by the continuation of its own movement, and thereby reaches a concrete stage. Plato sometimes uses this complete dialectical movement, and ends affirmatively; sometimes he uses only the partial movement and draws negative conclusions.

How much better M. Janet’s book might have been—we may be allowed to remark in conclusion—had he possessed the earnest spirit of such men as Vera and Hutchison Stirling! Stimulated by its title, we had hoped to find a book that would kindle a zeal for the study of the profoundest philosophical subject, as treated by the profoundest of thinkers.