No More Learning

A stranger has no vote on such a question;
but after repeated perusal of the works of Opitz my feelings justified
the verdict, and I seemed to have acquired from them a sort of tact for
what is genuine in the style of later writers.

Of the splendid aera, which commenced with Gellert, Klopstock, Ramler,
Lessing, and their compeers, I need not speak. With the opportunities
which I enjoyed, it would have been disgraceful not to have been
familiar with their writings; and I have already said as much as the
present biographical sketch requires concerning the German philosophers,
whose works, for the greater part, I became acquainted with at a far
later period.

Soon after my return from Germany I was solicited to undertake the
literary and political department in the Morning Post; and I acceded to
the proposal on the condition that the paper should thenceforwards be
conducted on certain fixed and announced principles, and that I should
neither be obliged nor requested to deviate from them in favour of any
party or any event. In consequence, that journal became and for many
years continued anti-ministerial indeed, yet with a very qualified
approbation of the opposition, and with far greater earnestness and zeal
both anti-Jacobin and anti-Gallican. To this hour I cannot find reason
to approve of the first war either in its commencement or its conduct.
Nor can I understand, with what reason either Mr. Perceval, (whom I
am singular enough to regard as the best and wisest minister of this
reign,) nor the present Administration, can be said to have pursued the
plans of Mr. Pitt. The love of their country, and perseverant hostility
to French principles and French ambition are indeed honourable qualities
common to them and to their predecessor. But it appears to me as clear
as the evidence of the facts can render any question of history, that
the successes of the Perceval and of the existing ministry have been
owing to their having pursued measures the direct contrary to Mr.
Pitt's. Such for instance are the concentration of the national force to
one object; the abandonment of the subsidizing policy, so far at least
as neither to goad nor bribe the continental courts into war, till
the convictions of their subjects had rendered it a war of their own
seeking; and above all, in their manly and generous reliance on the good
sense of the English people, and on that loyalty which is linked to
the very [40] heart of the nation by the system of credit and the
interdependence of property.

Be this as it may, I am persuaded that the Morning Post proved a far
more useful ally to the Government in its most important objects,
in consequence of its being generally considered as moderately anti-
ministerial, than if it had been the avowed eulogist of Mr. Pitt. The
few, whose curiosity or fancy should lead them to turn over the journals
of that date, may find a small proof of this in the frequent charges
made by the Morning Chronicle, that such and such essays or leading
paragraphs had been sent from the Treasury. The rapid and unusual
increase in the sale of the Morning Post is a sufficient pledge, that
genuine impartiality with a respectable portion of literary talent
will secure the success of a newspaper without the aid of party
or ministerial patronage. But by impartiality I mean an honest and
enlightened adherence to a code of intelligible principles previously
announced, and faithfully referred to in support of every judgment
on men and events; not indiscriminate abuse, not the indulgence of an
editor's own malignant passions, and still less, if that be possible,
a determination to make money by flattering the envy and cupidity, the
vindictive restlessness and self-conceit of the half-witted vulgar; a
determination almost fiendish, but which, I have been informed, has
been boastfully avowed by one man, the most notorious of these
mob-sycophants! From the commencement of the Addington administration to
the present day, whatever I have written in THE MORNING POST, or (after
that paper was transferred to other proprietors) in THE COURIER, has
been in defence or furtherance of the measures of Government.

Things of this nature scarce survive that night
That gives them birth; they perish in the sight;
Cast by so far from after-life, that there
Can scarcely aught be said, but that they were!

Yet in these labours I employed, and, in the belief of partial friends
wasted, the prime and manhood of my intellect. Most assuredly, they
added nothing to my fortune or my reputation. The industry of the week
supplied the necessities of the week. From government or the friends of
government I not only never received remuneration, nor ever expected it;
but I was never honoured with a single acknowledgment, or expression
of satisfaction. Yet the retrospect is far from painful or matter of
regret. I am not indeed silly enough to take as any thing more than a
violent hyperbole of party debate, Mr. Fox's assertion that the late war
(I trust that the epithet is not prematurely applied) was a war produced
by the Morning Post; or I should be proud to have the words inscribed on
my tomb. As little do I regard the circumstance, that I was a specified
object of Buonaparte's resentment during my residence in Italy in
consequence of those essays in the Morning Post during the peace of
Amiens. Of this I was warned, directly, by Baron Von Humboldt, the
Prussian Plenipotentiary, who at that time was the minister of the
Prussian court at Rome; and indirectly, through his secretary,
by Cardinal Fesch himself. Nor do I lay any greater weight on the
confirming fact, that an order for my arrest was sent from Paris, from
which danger I was rescued by the kindness of a noble Benedictine, and
the gracious connivance of that good old man, the present Pope. For the
late tyrant's vindictive appetite was omnivorous, and preyed equally on
a Duc d'Enghien [41], and the writer of a newspaper paragraph. Like a
true vulture [42], Napoleon with an eye not less telescopic, and with a
taste equally coarse in his ravin, could descend from the most dazzling
heights to pounce on the leveret in the brake, or even on the field
mouse amid the grass. But I do derive a gratification from the
knowledge, that my essays contributed to introduce the practice of
placing the questions and events of the day in a moral point of view;
in giving a dignity to particular measures by tracing their policy or
impolicy to permanent principles, and an interest to principles by the
application of them to individual measures. In Mr. Burke's writings
indeed the germs of almost all political truths may be found. But I
dare assume to myself the merit of having first explicitly defined
and analyzed the nature of Jacobinism; and that in distinguishing the
Jacobin from the republican, the democrat, and the mere demagogue, I
both rescued the word from remaining a mere term of abuse, and put on
their guard many honest minds, who even in their heat of zeal against
Jacobinism, admitted or supported principles from which the worst parts
of that system may be legitimately deduced. That these are not
necessary practical results of such principles, we owe to that fortunate
inconsequence of our nature, which permits the heart to rectify the
errors of the understanding. The detailed examination of the consular
Government and its pretended constitution, and the proof given by me,
that it was a consummate despotism in masquerade, extorted a recantation
even from the Morning Chronicle, which had previously extolled this
constitution as the perfection of a wise and regulated liberty. On every
great occurrence I endeavoured to discover in past history the event,
that most nearly resembled it. I procured, wherever it was possible,
the contemporary historians, memorialists, and pamphleteers. Then fairly
subtracting the points of difference from those of likeness, as the
balance favoured the former or the latter, I conjectured that the result
would be the same or different. In the series of essays entitled "A
comparison of France under Napoleon with Rome under the first Caesars,"
and in those which followed "On the probable final restoration of the
Bourbons," I feel myself authorized to affirm, by the effect produced on
many intelligent men, that, were the dates wanting, it might have
been suspected that the essays had been written within the last twelve
months. The same plan I pursued at the commencement of the Spanish
revolution, and with the same success, taking the war of the United
Provinces with Philip II as the ground work of the comparison. I have
mentioned this from no motives of vanity, nor even from motives of self
defence, which would justify a certain degree of egotism, especially
if it be considered, how often and grossly I have been attacked for
sentiments, which I have exerted my best powers to confute and expose,
and how grievously these charges acted to my disadvantage while I was
in Malta. Or rather they would have done so, if my own feelings had not
precluded the wish of a settled establishment in that island. But I
have mentioned it from the full persuasion that, armed with the two-fold
knowledge of history and the human mind, a man will scarcely err in his
judgment concerning the sum total of any future national event, if he
have been able to procure the original documents of the past, together
with authentic accounts of the present, and if he have a philosophic
tact for what is truly important in facts, and in most instances
therefore for such facts as the dignity of history has excluded from
the volumes of our modern compilers, by the courtesy of the age entitled
historians.

To have lived in vain must be a painful thought to any man, and
especially so to him who has made literature his profession. I should
therefore rather condole than be angry with the mind, which could
attribute to no worthier feelings than those of vanity or self-love,
the satisfaction which I acknowledged myself to have enjoyed from the
republication of my political essays (either whole or as extracts) not
only in many of our own provincial papers, but in the federal journals
throughout America. I regarded it as some proof of my not having
laboured altogether in vain, that from the articles written by me
shortly before and at the commencement of the late unhappy war with
America, not only the sentiments were adopted, but in some instances the
very language, in several of the Massachusetts state papers.

But no one of these motives nor all conjointly would have impelled me
to a statement so uncomfortable to my own feelings, had not my character
been repeatedly attacked, by an unjustifiable intrusion on private life,
as of a man incorrigibly idle, and who intrusted not only with ample
talents, but favoured with unusual opportunities of improving them, had
nevertheless suffered them to rust away without any efficient exertion,
either for his own good or that of his fellow creatures. Even if the
compositions, which I have made public, and that too in a form the most
certain of an extensive circulation, though the least flattering to an
author's self-love, had been published in books, they would have
filled a respectable number of volumes, though every passage of merely
temporary interest were omitted. My prose writings have been charged
with a disproportionate demand on the attention; with an excess of
refinement in the mode of arriving at truths; with beating the ground
for that which might have been run down by the eye; with the length and
laborious construction of my periods; in short with obscurity and the
love of paradox. But my severest critics have not pretended to have
found in my compositions triviality, or traces of a mind that shrunk
from the toil of thinking. No one has charged me with tricking out in
other words the thoughts of others, or with hashing up anew the cramben
jam decies coctam of English literature or philosophy. Seldom have I
written that in a day, the acquisition or investigation of which had not
cost me the previous labour of a month.

But are books the only channel through which the stream of intellectual
usefulness can flow? Is the diffusion of truth to be estimated by
publications; or publications by the truth, which they diffuse or at
least contain? I speak it in the excusable warmth of a mind stung by an
accusation, which has not only been advanced in reviews of the widest
circulation, not only registered in the bulkiest works of periodical
literature, but by frequency of repetition has become an admitted fact
in private literary circles, and thoughtlessly repeated by too many who
call themselves my friends, and whose own recollections ought to have
suggested a contrary testimony. Would that the criterion of a scholar's
utility were the number and moral value of the truths, which he has been
the means of throwing into the general circulation; or the number and
value of the minds, whom by his conversation or letters, he has excited
into activity, and supplied with the germs of their after-growth!
A distinguished rank might not indeed, even then, be awarded to
my exertions; but I should dare look forward with confidence to
an honourable acquittal. I should dare appeal to the numerous and
respectable audiences, which at different times and in different places
honoured my lecture rooms with their attendance, whether the points
of view from which the subjects treated of were surveyed,--whether the
grounds of my reasoning were such, as they had heard or read elsewhere,
or have since found in previous publications. I can conscientiously
declare, that the complete success of the REMORSE on the first night of
its representation did not give me as great or as heart-felt a pleasure,
as the observation that the pit and boxes were crowded with faces
familiar to me, though of individuals whose names I did not know, and
of whom I knew nothing, but that they had attended one or other of my
courses of lectures. It is an excellent though perhaps somewhat vulgar
proverb, that there are cases where a man may be as well "in for a pound
as for a penny. " To those, who from ignorance of the serious injury
I have received from this rumour of having dreamed away my life to no
purpose, injuries which I unwillingly remember at all, much less am
disposed to record in a sketch of my literary life; or to those, who
from their own feelings, or the gratification they derive from thinking
contemptuously of others, would like job's comforters attribute these
complaints, extorted from me by the sense of wrong, to self conceit or
presumptuous vanity, I have already furnished such ample materials, that
I shall gain nothing by withholding the remainder. I will not
therefore hesitate to ask the consciences of those, who from their long
acquaintance with me and with the circumstances are best qualified to
decide or be my judges, whether the restitution of the suum cuique would
increase or detract from my literary reputation. In this exculpation
I hope to be understood as speaking of myself comparatively, and in
proportion to the claims, which others are entitled to make on my time
or my talents. By what I have effected, am I to be judged by my fellow
men; what I could have done, is a question for my own conscience. On
my own account I may perhaps have had sufficient reason to lament my
deficiency in self-control, and the neglect of concentering my powers
to the realization of some permanent work. But to verse rather than to
prose, if to either, belongs the voice of mourning for

Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe
Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart;
And fears self-willed that shunned the eye of hope;
And hope that scarce would know itself from fear;
Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
And genius given and knowledge won in vain;
And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild,
And all which patient toil had reared, and all,
Commune with thee had opened out--but flowers
Strewed on my corpse, and borne upon my bier,
In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!

These will exist, for the future, I trust, only in the poetic strains,
which the feelings at the time called forth. In those only, gentle
reader,

Affectus animi varios, bellumque sequacis
Perlegis invidiae, curasque revolvis inanes,
Quas humilis tenero stylus olim effudit in aevo.
Perlegis et lacrymas, et quod pharetratus acuta
Ille puer puero fecit mihi cuspide vulnus.
Omnia paulatim consumit longior aetas,
Vivendoque simul morimur, rapimurque manendo.
Ipse mihi collatus enim non ille videbor;
Frons alia est, moresque alii, nova mentis imago,
Vox aliudque sonat--Jamque observatio vitae
Multa dedit--lugere nihil, ferre omnia; jamque
Paulatim lacrymas rerum experientia tersit.




CHAPTER XI

An affectionate exhortation to those who in early life feel themselves
disposed to become authors.


It was a favourite remark of the late Mr. Whitbread's, that no man does
any thing from a single motive. The separate motives, or rather moods of
mind, which produced the preceding reflections and anecdotes have been
laid open to the reader in each separate instance. But an interest in
the welfare of those, who at the present time may be in circumstances
not dissimilar to my own at my first entrance into life, has been
the constant accompaniment, and (as it were) the under-song of all
my feelings. Whitehead exerting the prerogative of his laureateship
addressed to youthful poets a poetic Charge, which is perhaps the
best, and certainly the most interesting, of his works. With no other
privilege than that of sympathy and sincere good wishes, I would address
an affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati, grounded on my
own experience. It will be but short; for the beginning, middle, and
end converge to one charge: never pursue literature as a trade. With the
exception of one extraordinary man, I have never known an individual,
least of all an individual of genius, healthy or happy without a
profession, that is, some regular employment, which does not depend on
the will of the moment, and which can be carried on so far mechanically
that an average quantum only of health, spirits, and intellectual
exertion are requisite to its faithful discharge. Three hours of
leisure, unannoyed by any alien anxiety, and looked forward to
with delight as a change and recreation, will suffice to realize in
literature a larger product of what is truly genial, than weeks of
compulsion. Money, and immediate reputation form only an arbitrary and
accidental end of literary labour. The hope of increasing them by
any given exertion will often prove a stimulant to industry; but the
necessity of acquiring them will in all works of genius convert the
stimulant into a narcotic. Motives by excess reverse their very nature,
and instead of exciting, stun and stupify the mind. For it is one
contradistinction of genius from talent, that its predominant end is
always comprised in the means; and this is one of the many points, which
establish an analogy between genius and virtue. Now though talents may
exist without genius, yet as genius cannot exist, certainly not manifest
itself, without talents, I would advise every scholar, who feels the
genial power working within him, so far to make a division between
the two, as that he should devote his talents to the acquirement of
competence in some known trade or profession, and his genius to objects
of his tranquil and unbiassed choice; while the consciousness of being
actuated in both alike by the sincere desire to perform his duty, will
alike ennoble both. "My dear young friend," (I would say) "suppose
yourself established in any honourable occupation. From the manufactory
or counting house, from the law-court, or from having visited your last
patient, you return at evening,

Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home
Is sweetest------

to your family, prepared for its social enjoyments, with the very
countenances of your wife and children brightened, and their voice of
welcome made doubly welcome, by the knowledge that, as far as they are
concerned, you have satisfied the demands of the day by the labour of
the day. Then, when you retire into your study, in the books on
your shelves you revisit so many venerable friends with whom you can
converse. Your own spirit scarcely less free from personal anxieties
than the great minds, that in those books are still living for you! Even
your writing desk with its blank paper and all its other implements will
appear as a chain of flowers, capable of linking your feelings as well
as thoughts to events and characters past or to come; not a chain of
iron, which binds you down to think of the future and the remote by
recalling the claims and feelings of the peremptory present. But why
should I say retire? The habits of active life and daily intercourse
with the stir of the world will tend to give you such self-command, that
the presence of your family will be no interruption. Nay, the social
silence, or undisturbing voices of a wife or sister will be like a
restorative atmosphere, or soft music which moulds a dream without
becoming its object. If facts are required to prove the possibility of
combining weighty performances in literature with full and independent
employment, the works of Cicero and Xenophon among the ancients; of
Sir Thomas More, Bacon, Baxter, or to refer at once to later and
contemporary instances, Darwin and Roscoe, are at once decisive of the
question. "

But all men may not dare promise themselves a sufficiency of self-
control for the imitation of those examples: though strict scrutiny
should always be made, whether indolence, restlessness, or a vanity
impatient for immediate gratification, have not tampered with the
judgment and assumed the vizard of humility for the purposes of self-
delusion. Still the Church presents to every man of learning and genius
a profession, in which he may cherish a rational hope of being able
to unite the widest schemes of literary utility with the strictest
performance of professional duties. Among the numerous blessings
of Christianity, the introduction of an established Church makes
an especial claim on the gratitude of scholars and philosophers; in
England, at least, where the principles of Protestantism have conspired
with the freedom of the government to double all its salutary powers by
the removal of its abuses.

That not only the maxims, but the grounds of a pure morality, the mere
fragments of which

------the lofty grave tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts; [43]

and that the sublime truths of the divine unity and attributes, which
a Plato found most hard to learn and deemed it still more difficult to
reveal; that these should have become the almost hereditary property of
childhood and poverty, of the hovel and the workshop; that even to the
unlettered they sound as common place, is a phaenomenon, which must
withhold all but minds of the most vulgar cast from undervaluing the
services even of the pulpit and the reading desk. Yet those, who confine
the efficiency of an established Church to its public offices, can
hardly be placed in a much higher rank of intellect. That to every
parish throughout the kingdom there is transplanted a germ of
civilization; that in the remotest villages there is a nucleus, round
which the capabilities of the place may crystallize and brighten;
a model sufficiently superior to excite, yet sufficiently near to
encourage and facilitate, imitation; this, the unobtrusive, continuous
agency of a protestant church establishment, this it is, which the
patriot, and the philanthropist, who would fain unite the love of
peace with the faith in the progressive melioration of mankind, cannot
estimate at too high a price. It cannot be valued with the gold of
Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. No mention shall be made
of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies. The
clergyman is with his parishioners and among them; he is neither in
the cloistered cell, nor in the wilderness, but a neighbour and a
family-man, whose education and rank admit him to the mansion of the
rich landholder, while his duties make him the frequent visitor of the
farmhouse and the cottage. He is, or he may become, connected, with
the families of his parish or its vicinity by marriage. And among the
instances of the blindness, or at best of the short-sightedness, which
it is the nature of cupidity to inflict, I know few more striking than
the clamours of the farmers against Church property. Whatever was not
paid to the clergyman would inevitably at the next lease be paid to the
landholder, while, as the case at present stands, the revenues of the
Church are in some sort the reversionary property of every family, that
may have a member educated for the Church, or a daughter that may marry
a clergyman. Instead of being foreclosed and immovable, it is in fact
the only species of landed property, that is essentially moving and
circulative. That there exist no inconveniences, who will pretend to
assert? But I have yet to expect the proof, that the inconveniences are
greater in this than in any other species; or that either the farmers
or the clergy would be benefited by forcing the latter to become either
Trullibers or salaried placemen. Nay, I do not hesitate to declare my
firm persuasion, that whatever reason of discontent the farmers may
assign, the true cause is this; that they may cheat the parson, but
cannot cheat the steward; and that they are disappointed, if they should
have been able to withhold only two pounds less than the legal claim,
having expected to withhold five. At all events, considered relatively
to the encouragement of learning and genius, the establishment presents
a patronage at once so effective and unburdensome, that it would be
impossible to afford the like or equal in any but a Christian and
Protestant country. There is scarce a department of human knowledge
without some bearing on the various critical, historical, philosophical
and moral truths, in which the scholar must be interested as a
clergyman; no one pursuit worthy of a man of genius, which may not be
followed without incongruity. To give the history of the Bible as a
book, would be little less than to relate the origin or first excitement
of all the literature and science, that we now possess. The very
decorum, which the profession imposes, is favourable to the best
purposes of genius, and tends to counteract its most frequent defects.
Finally, that man must be deficient in sensibility, who would not find
an incentive to emulation in the great and burning lights, which in a
long series have illustrated the church of England; who would not hear
from within an echo to the voice from their sacred shrines,

Et Pater Aeneas et avunculus excitat Hector.

But, whatever be the profession or trade chosen, the advantages are many
and important, compared with the state of a mere literary man, who in
any degree depends on the sale of his works for the necessaries and
comforts of life. In the former a man lives in sympathy with the world,
in which he lives. At least he acquires a better and quicker tact for
the knowledge of that, with which men in general can sympathize. He
learns to manage his genius more prudently and efficaciously. His
powers and acquirements gain him likewise more real admiration; for they
surpass the legitimate expectations of others. He is something besides
an author, and is not therefore considered merely as an author. The
hearts of men are open to him, as to one of their own class; and
whether he exerts himself or not in the conversational circles of
his acquaintance, his silence is not attributed to pride, nor his
communicativeness to vanity. To these advantages I will venture to add
a superior chance of happiness in domestic life, were it only that it is
as natural for the man to be out of the circle of his household during
the day, as it is meritorious for the woman to remain for the most part
within it. But this subject involves points of consideration so numerous
and so delicate, and would not only permit, but require such ample
documents from the biography of literary men, that I now merely allude
to it in transitu. When the same circumstance has occurred at very
different times to very different persons, all of whom have some one
thing in common; there is reason to suppose that such circumstance is
not merely attributable to the persons concerned, but is in some measure
occasioned by the one point in common to them all. Instead of the
vehement and almost slanderous dehortation from marriage, which the
Misogyne, Boccaccio [44] addresses to literary men, I would substitute
the simple advice: be not merely a man of letters! Let literature be an
honourable augmentation to your arms; but not constitute the coat, or
fill the escutcheon!

To objections from conscience I can of course answer in no other way,
than by requesting the youthful objector (as I have already done on
a former occasion) to ascertain with strict self-examination, whether
other influences may not be at work; whether spirits, "not of health,"
and with whispers "not from heaven," may not be walking in the twilight
of his consciousness. Let him catalogue his scruples, and reduce them to
a distinct intelligible form; let him be certain, that he has read with
a docile mind and favourable dispositions the best and most fundamental
works on the subject; that he has had both mind and heart opened to the
great and illustrious qualities of the many renowned characters, who
had doubted like himself, and whose researches had ended in the clear
conviction, that their doubts had been groundless, or at least in no
proportion to the counter-weight. Happy will it be for such a man, if
among his contemporaries elder than himself he should meet with
one, who, with similar powers and feelings as acute as his own,
had entertained the same scruples; had acted upon them; and who by
after-research (when the step was, alas! irretrievable, but for that
very reason his research undeniably disinterested) had discovered
himself to have quarrelled with received opinions only to embrace
errors, to have left the direction tracked out for him on the high road
of honourable exertion, only to deviate into a labyrinth, where when he
had wandered till his head was giddy, his best good fortune was finally
to have found his way out again, too late for prudence though not too
late for conscience or for truth! Time spent in such delay is time
won: for manhood in the meantime is advancing, and with it increase of
knowledge, strength of judgment, and above all, temperance of feelings.
And even if these should effect no change, yet the delay will at least
prevent the final approval of the decision from being alloyed by
the inward censure of the rashness and vanity, by which it had been
precipitated. It would be a sort of irreligion, and scarcely less than
a libel on human nature to believe, that there is any established and
reputable profession or employment, in which a man may not continue to
act with honesty and honour; and doubtless there is likewise none, which
may not at times present temptations to the contrary. But wofully will
that man find himself mistaken, who imagines that the profession of
literature, or (to speak more plainly) the trade of authorship, besets
its members with fewer or with less insidious temptations, than the
Church, the law, or the different branches of commerce. But I have
treated sufficiently on this unpleasant subject in an early chapter of
this volume. I will conclude the present therefore with a short extract
from Herder, whose name I might have added to the illustrious list of
those, who have combined the successful pursuit of the Muses, not only
with the faithful discharge, but with the highest honours and honourable
emoluments of an established profession. The translation the reader
will find in a note below [45]. "Am sorgfaeltigsten, meiden sie die
Autorschaft. Zu frueh oder unmaessig gebraucht, macht sie den Kopf
wueste and das Herz leer; wenn sie auch sonst keine ueble Folgen gaebe.
Ein Mensch, der nur lieset um zu druecken, lieset wahrscheinlich uebel;
und wer jeden Gedanken, der ihm aufstosst, durch Feder and Presse
versendet, hat sie in kurzer Zeit alle versandt, und wird bald ein
blosser Diener der Druckerey, ein Buchstabensetzer werden. "




CHAPTER XII

A chapter of requests and premonitions concerning the perusal or
omission of the chapter that follows.


In the perusal of philosophical works I have been greatly benefited by
a resolve, which, in the antithetic form and with the allowed quaintness
of an adage or maxim, I have been accustomed to word thus: until you
understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his
understanding. This golden rule of mine does, I own, resemble those of
Pythagoras in its obscurity rather than in its depth. If however the
reader will permit me to be my own Hierocles, I trust, that he will
find its meaning fully explained by the following instances. I have
now before me a treatise of a religious fanatic, full of dreams and
supernatural experiences. I see clearly the writer's grounds, and their
hollowness. I have a complete insight into the causes, which through the
medium of his body has acted on his mind; and by application of received
and ascertained laws I can satisfactorily explain to my own reason all
the strange incidents, which the writer records of himself. And this I
can do without suspecting him of any intentional falsehood. As when in
broad day-light a man tracks the steps of a traveller, who had lost his
way in a fog or by a treacherous moonshine, even so, and with the same
tranquil sense of certainty, can I follow the traces of this bewildered
visionary. I understand his ignorance.

On the other hand, I have been re-perusing with the best energies of my
mind the TIMAEUS of Plato. Whatever I comprehend, impresses me with a
reverential sense of the author's genius; but there is a considerable
portion of the work, to which I can attach no consistent meaning.
In other treatises of the same philosopher, intended for the average
comprehensions of men, I have been delighted with the masterly good
sense, with the perspicuity of the language, and the aptness of the
inductions. I recollect likewise, that numerous passages in this author,
which I thoroughly comprehend, were formerly no less unintelligible to
me, than the passages now in question. It would, I am aware, be quite
fashionable to dismiss them at once as Platonic jargon. But this I
cannot do with satisfaction to my own mind, because I have sought in
vain for causes adequate to the solution of the assumed inconsistency.
I have no insight into the possibility of a man so eminently wise, using
words with such half-meanings to himself, as must perforce pass into no
meaning to his readers. When in addition to the motives thus suggested
by my own reason, I bring into distinct remembrance the number and the
series of great men, who, after long and zealous study of these works
had joined in honouring the name of Plato with epithets, that almost
transcend humanity, I feel, that a contemptuous verdict on my part might
argue want of modesty, but would hardly be received by the judicious, as
evidence of superior penetration. Therefore, utterly baffled in all
my attempts to understand the ignorance of Plato, I conclude myself
ignorant of his understanding.

In lieu of the various requests which the anxiety of authorship
addresses to the unknown reader, I advance but this one; that he will
either pass over the following chapter altogether, or read the whole
connectedly. The fairest part of the most beautiful body will appear
deformed and monstrous, if dissevered from its place in the organic
whole. Nay, on delicate subjects, where a seemingly trifling difference
of more or less may constitute a difference in kind, even a faithful
display of the main and supporting ideas, if yet they are separated from
the forms by which they are at once clothed and modified, may perchance
present a skeleton indeed; but a skeleton to alarm and deter. Though I
might find numerous precedents, I shall not desire the reader to strip
his mind of all prejudices, nor to keep all prior systems out of view
during his examination of the present. For in truth, such requests
appear to me not much unlike the advice given to hypochondriacal
patients in Dr. Buchan's domestic medicine; videlicet, to preserve
themselves uniformly tranquil and in good spirits. Till I had discovered
the art of destroying the memory a parte post, without injury to its
future operations, and without detriment to the judgment, I should
suppress the request as premature; and therefore, however much I may
wish to be read with an unprejudiced mind, I do not presume to state it
as a necessary condition.

The extent of my daring is to suggest one criterion, by which it may be
rationally conjectured beforehand, whether or no a reader would lose
his time, and perhaps his temper, in the perusal of this, or any other
treatise constructed on similar principles. But it would be cruelly
misinterpreted, as implying the least disrespect either for the moral
or intellectual qualities of the individuals thereby precluded. The
criterion is this: if a man receives as fundamental facts, and therefore
of course indemonstrable and incapable of further analysis, the general
notions of matter, spirit, soul, body, action, passiveness, time, space,
cause and effect, consciousness, perception, memory and habit; if
he feels his mind completely at rest concerning all these, and is
satisfied, if only he can analyse all other notions into some one or
more of these supposed elements with plausible subordination and apt
arrangement: to such a mind I would as courteously as possible convey
the hint, that for him the chapter was not written.

Vir bonus es, doctus, prudens; ast haud tibi spiro.

For these terms do in truth include all the difficulties, which the
human mind can propose for solution. Taking them therefore in mass, and
unexamined, it required only a decent apprenticeship in logic, to draw
forth their contents in all forms and colours, as the professors of
legerdemain at our village fairs pull out ribbon after ribbon from their
mouths. And not more difficult is it to reduce them back again to their
different genera. But though this analysis is highly useful in rendering
our knowledge more distinct, it does not really add to it. It does not
increase, though it gives us a greater mastery over, the wealth which
we before possessed. For forensic purposes, for all the established
professions of society, this is sufficient. But for philosophy in its
highest sense as the science of ultimate truths, and therefore scientia
scientiarum, this mere analysis of terms is preparative only, though as
a preparative discipline indispensable.

Still less dare a favourable perusal be anticipated from the proselytes
of that compendious philosophy, which talking of mind but thinking
of brick and mortar, or other images equally abstracted from body,
contrives a theory of spirit by nicknaming matter, and in a few hours
can qualify its dullest disciples to explain the omne scibile by
reducing all things to impressions, ideas, and sensations.

But it is time to tell the truth; though it requires some courage to
avow it in an age and country, in which disquisitions on all subjects,
not privileged to adopt technical terms or scientific symbols, must be
addressed to the Public. I say then, that it is neither possible nor
necessary for all men, nor for many, to be philosophers. There is a
philosophic (and inasmuch as it is actualized by an effort of freedom,
an artificial) consciousness, which lies beneath or (as it were) behind
the spontaneous consciousness natural to all reflecting beings. As the
elder Romans distinguished their northern provinces into Cis-Alpine and
Trans-Alpine, so may we divide all the objects of human knowledge into
those on this side, and those on the other side of the spontaneous
consciousness; citra et trans conscientiam communem. The latter is
exclusively the domain of pure philosophy, which is therefore properly
entitled transcendental, in order to discriminate it at once, both from
mere reflection and representation on the one hand, and on the other
from those flights of lawless speculation which, abandoned by all
distinct consciousness, because transgressing the bounds and purposes of
our intellectual faculties, are justly condemned, as transcendent [46].
The first range of hills, that encircles the scanty vale of human life,
is the horizon for the majority of its inhabitants. On its ridges the
common sun is born and departs. From them the stars rise, and touching
them they vanish. By the many, even this range, the natural limit and
bulwark of the vale, is but imperfectly known. Its higher ascents are
too often hidden by mists and clouds from uncultivated swamps, which
few have courage or curiosity to penetrate. To the multitude below these
vapours appear, now as the dark haunts of terrific agents, on which none
may intrude with impunity; and now all aglow, with colours not their
own, they are gazed at as the splendid palaces of happiness and power.
But in all ages there have been a few, who measuring and sounding the
rivers of the vale at the feet of their furthest inaccessible falls have
learned, that the sources must be far higher and far inward; a few, who
even in the level streams have detected elements, which neither the vale
itself nor the surrounding mountains contained or could supply [47].
How and whence to these thoughts, these strong probabilities, the
ascertaining vision, the intuitive knowledge may finally supervene, can
be learnt only by the fact. I might oppose to the question the words
with which [48] Plotinus supposes Nature to answer a similar difficulty.
"Should any one interrogate her, how she works, if graciously she
vouchsafe to listen and speak, she will reply, it behoves thee not to
disquiet me with interrogatories, but to understand in silence, even as
I am silent, and work without words. "

Likewise in the fifth book of the fifth Ennead, speaking of the highest
and intuitive knowledge as distinguished from the discursive, or in the
language of Wordsworth,

"The vision and the faculty divine;"

he says: "it is not lawful to inquire from whence it sprang, as if it
were a thing subject to place and motion, for it neither approached
hither, nor again departs from hence to some other place; but it either
appears to us or it does not appear. So that we ought not to pursue it
with a view of detecting its secret source, but to watch in quiet
till it suddenly shines upon us; preparing ourselves for the blessed
spectacle as the eye waits patiently for the rising sun.
" They and
they only can acquire the philosophic imagination, the sacred power of
self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret and understand the
symbol, that the wings of the air-sylph are forming within the skin
of the caterpillar; those only, who feel in their own spirits the same
instinct, which impels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave room in
its involucrum for antenna, yet to come. They know and feel, that the
potential works in them, even as the actual works on them! In short, all
the organs of sense are framed for a corresponding world of sense; and
we have it. All the organs of spirit are framed for a correspondent
world of spirit: though the latter organs are not developed in all
alike. But they exist in all, and their first appearance discloses
itself in the moral being. How else could it be, that even worldlings,
not wholly debased, will contemplate the man of simple and disinterested
goodness with contradictory feelings of pity and respect? "Poor man!
he is not made for this world. " Oh! herein they utter a prophecy of
universal fulfilment; for man must either rise or sink.

It is the essential mark of the true philosopher to rest satisfied with
no imperfect light, as long as the impossibility of attaining a fuller
knowledge has not been demonstrated. That the common consciousness
itself will furnish proofs by its own direction, that it is connected
with master-currents below the surface, I shall merely assume as
a postulate pro tempore. This having been granted, though but in
expectation of the argument, I can safely deduce from it the equal truth
of my former assertion, that philosophy cannot be intelligible to all,
even of the most learned and cultivated classes. A system, the first
principle of which it is to render the mind intuitive of the spiritual
in man (i. e. of that which lies on the other side of our natural
consciousness) must needs have a great obscurity for those, who have
never disciplined and strengthened this ulterior consciousness. It must
in truth be a land of darkness, a perfect Anti-Goshen, for men to whom
the noblest treasures of their own being are reported only through the
imperfect translation of lifeless and sightless motions. Perhaps, in
great part, through words which are but the shadows of notions; even
as the notional understanding itself is but the shadowy abstraction of
living and actual truth. On the IMMEDIATE, which dwells in every man,
and on the original intuition, or absolute affirmation of it, (which
is likewise in every man, but does not in every man rise into
consciousness) all the certainty of our knowledge depends; and this
becomes intelligible to no man by the ministry of mere words from
without. The medium, by which spirits understand each other, is not the
surrounding air; but the freedom which they possess in common, as the
common ethereal element of their being, the tremulous reciprocations
of which propagate themselves even to the inmost of the soul. Where the
spirit of a man is not filled with the consciousness of freedom (were it
only from its restlessness, as of one still struggling in bondage) all
spiritual intercourse is interrupted, not only with others, but even
with himself. No wonder then, that he remains incomprehensible to
himself as well as to others. No wonder, that, in the fearful desert of
his consciousness, he wearies himself out with empty words, to which
no friendly echo answers, either from his own heart, or the heart of a
fellow being; or bewilders himself in the pursuit of notional phantoms,
the mere refractions from unseen and distant truths through the
distorting medium of his own unenlivened and stagnant understanding!
To remain unintelligible to such a mind, exclaims Schelling on a like
occasion, is honour and a good name before God and man.

The history of philosophy (the same writer observes) contains instances
of systems, which for successive generations have remained enigmatic.
Such he deems the system of Leibnitz, whom another writer (rashly I
think, and invidiously) extols as the only philosopher, who was himself
deeply convinced of his own doctrines. As hitherto interpreted, however,
they have not produced the effect, which Leibnitz himself, in a most
instructive passage, describes as the criterion of a true philosophy;
namely, that it would at once explain and collect the fragments of truth
scattered through systems apparently the most incongruous. The truth,
says he, is diffused more widely than is commonly believed; but it
is often painted, yet oftener masked, and is sometimes mutilated and
sometimes, alas! in close alliance with mischievous errors. The deeper,
however, we penetrate into the ground of things, the more truth we
discover in the doctrines of the greater number of the philosophical
sects. The want of substantial reality in the objects of the senses,
according to the sceptics; the harmonies or numbers, the prototypes and
ideas, to which the Pythagoreans and Platonists reduced all things:
the ONE and ALL of Parmenides and Plotinus, without [49] Spinozism; the
necessary connection of things according to the Stoics, reconcilable
with the spontaneity of the other schools; the vital-philosophy of the
Cabalists and Hermetists, who assumed the universality of sensation;
the substantial forms and entelechies of Aristotle and the schoolmen,
together with the mechanical solution of all particular phaenomena
according to Democritus and the recent philosophers--all these we shall
find united in one perspective central point, which shows regularity
and a coincidence of all the parts in the very object, which from every
other point of view must appear confused and distorted. The spirit of
sectarianism has been hitherto our fault, and the cause of our failures.
We have imprisoned our own conceptions by the lines, which we have
drawn, in order to exclude the conceptions of others. J'ai trouve que
la plupart des Sectes ont raison dans une bonne partie de ce qu'elles
avancent, mais non pas tant en ce qu'elles nient.

A system, which aims to deduce the memory with all the other functions
of intelligence, must of course place its first position from beyond the
memory, and anterior to it, otherwise the principle of solution would
be itself a part of the problem to be solved. Such a position therefore
must, in the first instance be demanded, and the first question will be,
by what right is it demanded? On this account I think it expedient
to make some preliminary remarks on the introduction of Postulates
in philosophy. The word postulate is borrowed from the science
of mathematics [50]. In geometry the primary construction is not
demonstrated, but postulated. This first and most simple construction in
space is the point in motion, or the line. Whether the point is moved
in one and the same direction, or whether its direction is continually
changed, remains as yet undetermined. But if the direction of the point
have been determined, it is either by a point without it, and then there
arises the straight line which incloses no space; or the direction of
the point is not determined by a point without it, and then it must flow
back again on itself, that is, there arises a cyclical line, which does
enclose a space. If the straight line be assumed as the positive, the
cyclical is then the negation of the straight. It is a line, which at
no point strikes out into the straight, but changes its direction
continuously. But if the primary line be conceived as undetermined, and
the straight line as determined throughout, then the cyclical is the
third compounded of both. It is at once undetermined and determined;
undetermined through any point without, and determined through itself.
Geometry therefore supplies philosophy with the example of a primary
intuition, from which every science that lays claim to evidence
must take its commencement. The mathematician does not begin with a
demonstrable proposition, but with an intuition, a practical idea.

But here an important distinction presents itself. Philosophy is
employed on objects of the inner SENSE, and cannot, like geometry,
appropriate to every construction a correspondent outward intuition.
Nevertheless, philosophy, if it is to arrive at evidence, must proceed
from the most original construction, and the question then is, what is
the most original construction or first productive act for the inner
sense. The answer to this question depends on the direction which is
given to the inner sense. But in philosophy the inner sense cannot
have its direction determined by an outward object. To the original
construction of the line I can be compelled by a line drawn before me
on the slate or on sand. The stroke thus drawn is indeed not the line
itself, but only the image or picture of the line. It is not from it,
that we first learn to know the line; but, on the contrary, we
bring this stroke to the original line generated by the act of the
imagination; otherwise we could not define it as without breadth or
thickness. Still however this stroke is the sensuous image of
the original or ideal line, and an efficient mean to excite every
imagination to the intuition of it.

It is demanded then, whether there be found any means in philosophy
to determine the direction of the inner sense, as in mathematics it is
determinable by its specific image or outward picture. Now the inner
sense has its direction determined for the greater part only by an act
of freedom. One man's consciousness extends only to the pleasant or
unpleasant sensations caused in him by external impressions; another
enlarges his inner sense to a consciousness of forms and quantity; a
third in addition to the image is conscious of the conception or notion
of the thing; a fourth attains to a notion of his notions--he reflects
on his own reflections; and thus we may say without impropriety, that
the one possesses more or less inner sense, than the other. This more or
less betrays already, that philosophy in its first principles must have
a practical or moral, as well as a theoretical or speculative side.
This difference in degree does not exist in the mathematics. Socrates in
Plato shows, that an ignorant slave may be brought to understand and of
himself to solve the most difficult geometrical problem. Socrates drew
the figures for the slave in the sand. The disciples of the critical
philosophy could likewise (as was indeed actually done by La Forge
and some other followers of Des Cartes) represent the origin of our
representations in copper-plates; but no one has yet attempted it, and
it would be utterly useless. To an Esquimaux or New Zealander our most
popular philosophy would be wholly unintelligible. The sense, the inward
organ, for it is not yet born in him. So is there many a one among
us, yes, and some who think themselves philosophers too, to whom the
philosophic organ is entirely wanting. To such a man philosophy is a
mere play of words and notions, like a theory of music to the deaf, or
like the geometry of light to the blind. The connection of the parts and
their logical dependencies may be seen and remembered; but the whole is
groundless and hollow, unsustained by living contact, unaccompanied with
any realizing intuition which exists by and in the act that affirms its
existence, which is known, because it is, and is, because it is known.
The words of Plotinus, in the assumed person of Nature, hold true of the
philosophic energy. To theoroun mou, theoraema poiei, osper oi geometrai
theorountes graphousin; all' emon mae graphousaes, theorousaes de,
uphistantai ai ton somaton grammai. With me the act of contemplation
makes the thing contemplated, as the geometricians contemplating
describe lines correspondent; but I not describing lines, but simply
contemplating, the representative forms of things rise up into
existence.

The postulate of philosophy and at the same time the test of philosophic
capacity, is no other than the heaven-descended KNOW THYSELF! (E
coelo descendit, Gnothi seauton). And this at once practically and
speculatively. For as philosophy is neither a science of the reason or
understanding only, nor merely a science of morals, but the science of
BEING altogether, its primary ground can be neither merely speculative
nor merely practical, but both in one. All knowledge rests on the
coincidence of an object with a subject. (My readers have been warned
in a former chapter that, for their convenience as well as the writer's,
the term, subject, is used by me in its scholastic sense as equivalent
to mind or sentient being, and as the necessary correlative of object or
quicquid objicitur menti. ) For we can know that only which is true: and
the truth is universally placed in the coincidence of the thought with
the thing, of the representation with the object represented.

Now the sum of all that is merely OBJECTIVE, we will henceforth call
NATURE, confining the term to its passive and material sense, as
comprising all the phaenomena by which its existence is made known
to us. On the other hand the sum of all that is SUBJECTIVE, we may
comprehend in the name of the SELF or INTELLIGENCE. Both conceptions
are in necessary antithesis. Intelligence is conceived of as exclusively
representative, nature as exclusively represented; the one as conscious,
the other as without consciousness. Now in all acts of positive
knowledge there is required a reciprocal concurrence of both, namely
of the conscious being, and of that which is in itself unconscious.
Our problem is to explain this concurrence, its possibility and its
necessity.

During the act of knowledge itself, the objective and subjective are
so instantly united, that we cannot determine to which of the two
the priority belongs. There is here no first, and no second; both are
coinstantaneous and one. While I am attempting to explain this intimate
coalition, I must suppose it dissolved. I must necessarily set out from
the one, to which therefore I give hypothetical antecedence, in order to
arrive at the other. But as there are but two factors or elements in the
problem, subject and object, and as it is left indeterminate from which
of them I should commence, there are two cases equally possible.

1. EITHER THE OBJECTIVE IS TAKEN AS THE FIRST, AND THEN WE HAVE TO
ACCOUNT FOR THE SUPERVENTION OF THE SUBJECTIVE, WHICH COALESCES WITH IT.

The notion of the subjective is not contained in the notion of the
objective. On the contrary they mutually exclude each other. The
subjective therefore must supervene to the objective. The conception of
nature does not apparently involve the co-presence of an intelligence
making an ideal duplicate of it, that is, representing it. This desk
for instance would (according to our natural notions) be, though there
should exist no sentient being to look at it. This then is the problem
of natural philosophy. It assumes the objective or unconscious nature as
the first, and as therefore to explain how intelligence can supervene to
it, or how itself can grow into intelligence. If it should appear, that
all enlightened naturalists, without having distinctly proposed the
problem to themselves, have yet constantly moved in the line of its
solution, it must afford a strong presumption that the problem itself
is founded in nature. For if all knowledge has, as it were, two poles
reciprocally required and presupposed, all sciences must proceed from
the one or the other, and must tend toward the opposite as far as the
equatorial point in which both are reconciled and become identical. The
necessary tendency therefore of all natural philosophy is from nature to
intelligence; and this, and no other is the true ground and occasion of
the instinctive striving to introduce theory into our views of natural
phaenomena. The highest perfection of natural philosophy would consist
in the perfect spiritualization of all the laws of nature into laws
of intuition and intellect. The phaenomena (the material) most wholly
disappear, and the laws alone (the formal) must remain. Thence it comes,
that in nature itself the more the principle of law breaks forth, the
more does the husk drop off, the phaenomena themselves become more
spiritual and at length cease altogether in our consciousness. The
optical phaenomena are but a geometry, the lines of which are drawn
by light, and the materiality of this light itself has already become
matter of doubt. In the appearances of magnetism all trace of matter is
lost, and of the phaenomena of gravitation, which not a few among the
most illustrious Newtonians have declared no otherwise comprehensible
than as an immediate spiritual influence, there remains nothing but
its law, the execution of which on a vast scale is the mechanism of
the heavenly motions. The theory of natural philosophy would then be
completed, when all nature was demonstrated to be identical in
essence with that, which in its highest known power exists in man as
intelligence and self-consciousness; when the heavens and the earth
shall declare not only the power of their maker, but the glory and the
presence of their God, even as he appeared to the great prophet during
the vision of the mount in the skirts of his divinity.

This may suffice to show, that even natural science, which commences
with the material phaenomenon as the reality and substance of things
existing, does yet by the necessity of theorizing unconsciously, and
as it were instinctively, end in nature as an intelligence; and by this
tendency the science of nature becomes finally natural philosophy, the
one of the two poles of fundamental science.

2. OR THE SUBJECTIVE IS TAKEN AS THE FIRST, AND THE PROBLEM THEN IS, HOW
THERE SUPERVENES TO IT A COINCIDENT OBJECTIVE.

In the pursuit of these sciences, our success in each, depends on an
austere and faithful adherence to its own principles, with a careful
separation and exclusion of those, which appertain to the opposite
science. As the natural philosopher, who directs his views to the
objective, avoids above all things the intermixture of the subjective
in his knowledge, as for instance, arbitrary suppositions or rather
suflictions, occult qualities, spiritual agents, and the substitution of
final for efficient causes; so on the other hand, the transcendental
or intelligential philosopher is equally anxious to preclude all
interpellation of the objective into the subjective principles of his
science, as for instance the assumption of impresses or configurations
in the brain, correspondent to miniature pictures on the retina painted
by rays of light from supposed originals, which are not the immediate
and real objects of vision, but deductions from it for the purposes of
explanation. This purification of the mind is effected by an absolute
and scientific scepticism, to which the mind voluntarily determines
itself for the specific purpose of future certainty. Des Cartes who
(in his meditations) himself first, at least of the moderns, gave
a beautiful example of this voluntary doubt, this self-determined
indetermination, happily expresses its utter difference from the
scepticism of vanity or irreligion: Nec tamen in Scepticos imitabar,
qui dubitant tantum ut dubitent, et praeter incertitudinem ipsam nihil
quaerunt. Nam contra totus in eo eram ut aliquid certi reperirem [51].
Nor is it less distinct in its motives and final aim, than in its proper
objects, which are not as in ordinary scepticism the prejudices of
education and circumstance, but those original and innate prejudices
which nature herself has planted in all men, and which to all but the
philosopher are the first principles of knowledge, and the final test of
truth.

Now these essential prejudices are all reducible to the one fundamental
presumption, THAT THERE EXIST THINGS WITHOUT US. As this on the one hand
originates, neither in grounds nor arguments, and yet on the other hand
remains proof against all attempts to remove it by grounds or arguments
(naturam furca expellas tamen usque redibit;) on the one hand lays
claim to IMMEDIATE certainty as a position at once indemonstrable
and irresistible, and yet on the other hand, inasmuch as it refers to
something essentially different from ourselves, nay even in opposition
to ourselves, leaves it inconceivable how it could possibly become a
part of our immediate consciousness; (in other words how that, which
ex hypothesi is and continues to be extrinsic and alien to our being,
should become a modification of our being) the philosopher therefore
compels himself to treat this faith as nothing more than a prejudice,
innate indeed and connatural, but still a prejudice.

The other position, which not only claims but necessitates the admission
of its immediate certainty, equally for the scientific reason of the
philosopher as for the common sense of mankind at large, namely, I AM,
cannot so properly be entitled a prejudice. It is groundless indeed; but
then in the very idea it precludes all ground, and separated from
the immediate consciousness loses its whole sense and import. It is
groundless; but only because it is itself the ground of all other
certainty. Now the apparent contradiction, that the former position,
namely, the existence of things without us, which from its nature
cannot be immediately certain, should be received as blindly and as
independently of all grounds as the existence of our own being, the
Transcendental philosopher can solve only by the supposition, that the
former is unconsciously involved in the latter; that it is not only
coherent but identical, and one and the same thing with our own
immediate self consciousness. To demonstrate this identity is the office
and object of his philosophy.

If it be said, that this is idealism, let it be remembered that it
is only so far idealism, as it is at the same time, and on that very
account, the truest and most binding realism. For wherein does the
realism of mankind properly consist? In the assertion that there exists
a something without them, what, or how, or where they know not, which
occasions the objects of their perception? Oh no! This is neither
connatural nor universal. It is what a few have taught and learned
in the schools, and which the many repeat without asking themselves
concerning their own meaning. The realism common to all mankind is far
elder and lies infinitely deeper than this hypothetical explanation
of the origin of our perceptions, an explanation skimmed from the mere
surface of mechanical philosophy. It is the table itself, which the man
of common sense believes himself to see, not the phantom of a table,
from which he may argumentatively deduce the reality of a table, which
he does not see. If to destroy the reality of all, that we actually
behold, be idealism, what can be more egregiously so, than the system of
modern metaphysics, which banishes us to a land of shadows, surrounds
us with apparitions, and distinguishes truth from illusion only by the
majority of those who dream the same dream? "I asserted that the world
was mad," exclaimed poor Lee, "and the world said, that I was mad, and
confound them, they outvoted me. "

It is to the true and original realism, that I would direct the
attention. This believes and requires neither more nor less, than the
object which it beholds or presents to itself, is the real and very
object. In this sense, however much we may strive against it, we are all
collectively born idealists, and therefore and only therefore are we at
the same time realists. But of this the philosophers of the schools know
nothing, or despise the faith as the prejudice of the ignorant vulgar,
because they live and move in a crowd of phrases and notions from which
human nature has long ago vanished. Oh, ye that reverence yourselves,
and walk humbly with the divinity in your own hearts, ye are worthy of a
better philosophy! Let the dead bury the dead, but do you preserve your
human nature, the depth of which was never yet fathomed by a philosophy
made up of notions and mere logical entities.

In the third treatise of my Logosophia, announced at the end of this
volume, I shall give (Deo volente) the demonstrations and constructions
of the Dynamic Philosophy scientifically arranged. It is, according
to my conviction, no other than the system of Pythagoras and of Plato
revived and purified from impure mixtures. Doctrina per tot manus
tradita tandem in vappam desiit! The science of arithmetic furnishes
instances, that a rule may be useful in practical application, and for
the particular purpose may be sufficiently authenticated by the result,
before it has itself been fully demonstrated. It is enough, if only it
be rendered intelligible. This will, I trust, have been effected in the
following Theses for those of my readers, who are willing to accompany
me through the following chapter, in which the results will be applied
to the deduction of the Imagination, and with it the principles of
production and of genial criticism in the fine arts.

THESIS I

Truth is correlative to being. Knowledge without a correspondent reality
is no knowledge; if we know, there must be somewhat known by us. To know
is in its very essence a verb active.

THESIS II

All truth is either mediate, that is, derived from some other truth
or truths; or immediate and original. The latter is absolute, and its
formula A. A. ; the former is of dependent or conditional certainty, and
represented in the formula B. A. The certainty, which adheres in A, is
attributable to B.

SCHOLIUM. A chain without a staple, from which all the links derived
their stability, or a series without a first, has been not inaptly
allegorized, as a string of blind men, each holding the skirt of the man
before him, reaching far out of sight, but all moving without the least
deviation in one straight line. It would be naturally taken for
granted, that there was a guide at the head of the file: what if it were
answered, No! Sir, the men are without number, and infinite blindness
supplies the place of sight?

Equally inconceivable is a cycle of equal truths without a common and
central principle, which prescribes to each its proper sphere in the
system of science. That the absurdity does not so immediately strike us,
that it does not seem equally unimaginable, is owing to a surreptitious
act of the imagination, which, instinctively and without our noticing
the same, not only fills up the intervening spaces, and contemplates the
cycle (of B. C. D. E. F. etc. ) as a continuous circle (A. ) giving to all
collectively the unity of their common orbit; but likewise supplies,
by a sort of subintelligitur, the one central power, which renders the
movement harmonious and cyclical.

THESIS III

We are to seek therefore for some absolute truth capable of
communicating to other positions a certainty, which it has not itself
borrowed; a truth self-grounded, unconditional and known by its own
light. In short, we have to find a somewhat which is, simply because it
is. In order to be such, it must be one which is its own predicate,
so far at least that all other nominal predicates must be modes and
repetitions of itself. Its existence too must be such, as to preclude
the possibility of requiring a cause or antecedent without an absurdity.

THESIS IV

That there can be but one such principle, may be proved a priori; for
were there two or more, each must refer to some other, by which its
equality is affirmed; consequently neither would be self-established,
as the hypothesis demands. And a posteriori, it will be proved by
the principle itself when it is discovered, as involving universal
antecedence in its very conception.

SCHOLIUM. If we affirm of a board that it is blue, the predicate (blue)
is accidental, and not implied in the subject, board. If we affirm of
a circle that it is equi-radial, the predicate indeed is implied in the
definition of the subject; but the existence of the subject itself
is contingent, and supposes both a cause and a percipient. The same
reasoning will apply to the indefinite number of supposed indemonstrable
truths exempted from the profane approach of philosophic investigation
by the amiable Beattie, and other less eloquent and not more profound
inaugurators of common sense on the throne of philosophy; a fruitless
attempt, were it only that it is the two-fold function of philosophy
to reconcile reason with common sense, and to elevate common sense into
reason.

THESIS V

Such a principle cannot be any THING or OBJECT. Each thing is what it is
in consequence of some other thing. An infinite, independent [52]
thing, is no less a contradiction, than an infinite circle or a sideless
triangle. Besides a thing is that, which is capable of being an object
which itself is not the sole percipient. But an object is inconceivable
without a subject as its antithesis. Omne perceptum percipientem
supponit.

But neither can the principle be found in a subject as a subject,
contra-distinguished from an object: for unicuique percipienti aliquid
objicitur perceptum. It is to be found therefore neither in object
nor subject taken separately, and consequently, as no other third is
conceivable, it must be found in that which is neither subject nor
object exclusively, but which is the identity of both.

THESIS VI

This principle, and so characterised manifests itself in the SUM or
I AM; which I shall hereafter indiscriminately express by the words
spirit, self, and self-consciousness. In this, and in this alone,
object and subject, being and knowing, are identical, each involving
and supposing the other. In other words, it is a subject which becomes
a subject by the act of constructing itself objectively to itself; but
which never is an object except for itself, and only so far as by the
very same act it becomes a subject. It may be described therefore as
a perpetual self-duplication of one and the same power into object and
subject, which presuppose each other, and can exist only as antitheses.

SCHOLIUM. If a man be asked how he knows that he is? he can only answer,
sum quia sum. But if (the absoluteness of this certainty having been
admitted) he be again asked, how he, the individual person, came to be,
then in relation to the ground of his existence, not to the ground of
his knowledge of that existence, he might reply, sum quia Deus est, or
still more philosophically, sum quia in Deo sum.

But if we elevate our conception to the absolute self, the great eternal
I AM, then the principle of being, and of knowledge, of idea, and of
reality; the ground of existence, and the ground of the knowledge of
existence, are absolutely identical, Sum quia sum [53]; I am, because I
affirm myself to be; I affirm myself to be, because I am.

THESIS VII

If then I know myself only through myself, it is contradictory to
require any other predicate of self, but that of self-consciousness.
Only in the self-consciousness of a spirit is there the required
identity of object and of representation; for herein consists the
essence of a spirit, that it is self-representative. If therefore this
be the one only immediate truth, in the certainty of which the reality
of our collective knowledge is grounded, it must follow that the spirit
in all the objects which it views, views only itself. If this could
be proved, the immediate reality of all intuitive knowledge would be
assured. It has been shown, that a spirit is that, which is its own
object, yet not originally an object, but an absolute subject for which
all, itself included, may become an object.