of northern ice, he passed his whole
life in meditation upon the laws of human
intelligence.
life in meditation upon the laws of human
intelligence.
Madame de Stael - Germany
hathitrust.
org/access_use#pd-google
? GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 57
The greatness of soul that appeared among
the Romans, gave a sublime character to
their patriotism and their morals ; but this
consequence must be attributed to their
republican institutions. When liberty no
longer existed in Rome, a selfish and sensual
luxury was seen to reign there, with almost
an undivided empire; excepting that of an
adroit sort of political knowledge, which
directed every mind towards observation and
experience. The Romans retained nothing
of their past study of Grecian literature and
philosophy but a taste for the arts; and this
taste itself very soon degenerated into gross
enjoyments.
The influence of Rome did not exert itself
over the northern nations. They were al-
most entirely civilized by Christianity ;--and
their ancient religion, which contained
within it the principles of chivalry, bore no
resemblance to the Paganism of the South.
There was to be found a spirit of heroica!
and generous self-devotion; an enthusiasm
for women, which made a noble worship of
love; in a word, as the rigours of the climate
prevented man from plunging himself into
the delights of nature, he had so much the
keener relish for the pleasures of the soul
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? 58 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
It may be objected to me, that the Greeks
had the same religion and the same climate
as the Romans ; and that yet they have
given themselves up more than any other
people to speculative philosophy; but may
we not attribute to the Indians some of the
intellectual systems developed among the
Greeks? The ideal philosophy of Pytha-
goras and Plato ill agrees with Paganism,
such as it appears to us; historical traditions
also lead us to believe that . Egypt was
the medium through which the nations of
southern Europe received 'the influence of
the East. The philosophy of Epicurus is the
only philosophy of truly Grecian origin.
Whatever may become of these conjec-
tures, it is certain that the spirituality of the
soul, and all the thoughts derived from it,
have been easily naturalized among the peo-
ple of the North; and of all these nations,
the Germans have ever showed themselves
the most inclined to contemplative philo-
sophy. Leibnitz is their Bacon and their
Descartes. We find in this excellent genius
all the qualities which the German philoso-
phers in general glory to aim at: immense
erudition, perfect good faith, enthusiasm
hidden under strict form and method. He
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? GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 5. 9
had profoundly studied theology, jurispru-
dence, history, languages, mathematics, na-
tural philosophy, chemistry; for he was con-
vinced that an universality of knowledge
was necessary to constitute a superior being
in any department: in short, every thing in
Leibnitz displayed those virtues which are
allied to sublimity of thought, and which
deserve at once our admiration and our
respect.
His works may be divided into three
branches--the exact sciences, theological
philosophy, and the philosophy of the mind.
Every one knows that Leibnitz was the rival
of Newton, in the theory of calculation.
The knowledge of mathematics is very
useful in metaphysical studies; abstract rea-
soning does not exist in perfection out of
algebra and geometry; I shall endeavour to *
show in another place the unsuitableness of
this sort of reasoning, when we attempt to
exercise it upon a subject that is allied in
any manner to sensibility; but it confers
upon the human mind a power of attention,
that renders it much more capable of ana-
lysing itself: we must also know the laws and
the forces of the universe, to study man
under all his relations. There is such an
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? 60 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
analogy, and such a difference, between the
physical and the moral world, their re-
semblances and their diversity lend each
other such light, that it is impossible to be
a learned man of the first rank without the
assistance of speculative philosophy, nor a
speculative philosopher without having stu-
died the positive sciences.
Locke and Condiliac had not sufficiently
attended to these sciences ; but Leibnitz had
in this respect an incontestable superiority.
Descartes also was a very great mathema-
tician; and it is to be remarked, that the
greater part of the advocates for the ideal
philosophy have made an unbounded use of
their intellectual faculties. The exercise of
the mind, as well as that of the heart, im-
parts a feeling of internal activity, of which
all those beings who abandon themselves to
the impressions that come from without are
rarely capable.
The first class of the writings of Leibnitz
contains those which we call theological,
because they are directed to truths which
form part of the support of religion; and the
theory of the human mind is included in the
second class. In the first class he treats of
the origin of good and evil--of the divine
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? GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 6l
prescience;--in a word, of those primitive
questions which lie beyond the bounds of
human intelligence. I do not pretend to cen-
sure, by this expression, those great men who,
from the times of Pythagoras and Plato down
to our own, have been attracted towards these
lofty philosophical speculations. Genius does
not set bounds to itself, until it has struggled
for a long time against that hard necessity.
Who can possess the faculty of thinking,
and not endeavour to learn the origin and
the end of the things of this world?
Every thing that lives upon earth, except-
ing man, seems to be ignorant of itself. He
alone knows that he will die, and this awful
truth awakens his interest for all the grand
thoughts which are attached to it. From the
time that we are capable of reflection we
resolve, or rather we think we resolve, after
our own manner, the philosophical questions
which may explain the destiny of man; but
it has been granted to no one to compre-
hend that destiny altogether. Every man
views it from a different point; every man
has his own philosophy, his poetry, his love.
This philosophy is in accord with the peculiar
bms of his character and his mind. When
we raise ourselves towards infinity, a thou-
i
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? 62 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
sand explanations may be equally true,
although different; for questions without
bounds have thousands of aspects, one of
which may be sufficient to occupy the whole
duration of existence.
If the mystery of the universe is above the
understanding of man, still the study of this
mystery gives more expansion to the mind.
It is in metaphysics as it is in alchemy: in
searching for the philosopher's stone, in en-
deavouring to discover an impossibility, we
, meet upon the road with truths which would
have remained unknown to us: besides, we
cannot hinder a meditative being from be-
stowing some time at least upon the tran-
scendent philosophy; this ebullition of spi-
ritual nature cannot be kept back, without
bringing that nature into disgrace.
The pre-established harmony of Leibnitz,
which he believed to be a great discovery,
has been refuted with success; he flattered
himself that he could explain the relations
between mind and matter, by considering
them both as instruments tuned beforehand,
which re-echo, and answer, and imitate each
other mutually. His monads, of which he
constitutes the simple elements of the uni-
verse, are but an hypothesis as gratuitous
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? GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 63
as all those which have been used to explain
the origin of things. But in what a singular
state of perplexity is the human mind! In-
cessantly attracted towards the secret of its
being, it finds that secret equally impossible
to be discovered, or to be banished from its
thoughts.
The Persians say, that Zoroaster interro-
gated the Deity, and asked how the world
had begun, when it would end, what was
the origin of good and evil? The Deity an-
swered to all these questions--" Do what is
"good, and gain immortality. " The point
which particularly constitutes the excellence
of this reply, is this--that it does not dis-
courage man from the most sublime medi-
tations; it only teaches him, that by con-
science and sentiment he may exalt himself
to the most lofty conceptions of philosophy.
Leibnitz was an idealist, who founded his
system solely upon reasoning; and from
thence it arises, that he has pushed his ab-
stractions too far, and that he has not suffi-
ciently supported his theory upon inward
persuasion--the only true foundation of that
which is above the understanding: in short,
reason upon the liberty of man, and you
will not believe it; lay your hand upon your
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? 64 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
conscience, and you will not be able to
doubt it. Consequence and contradiction,
in the sense that we attach to either of these
terms, do not exist within the sphere of the
great questions concerning the liberty of
man, the origin of good and evil, the divine
prescience, &c. In these questions senti-
ment is almost always in opposition to rea-
son; in order to teach mankind, that what
he calls incredible in the order of earthly
things, is perhaps the supreme truth under
universal relations.
Dante has expressed a grand philosophical
thought by this verse :--
A guisa del ver primo che l'uom crede*.
We must believe certain truths as we believe
our own existence; it is the soul which re-
veals them to us; and reasonings of every
kind are never more than feeble streams de-
rived from this fountain.
The Theodicea of Leibnitz treats of the
divine prescience, and of the cause of good
and evil: it is one of the most profound and
argumentative works upon the theory of the
infinite; the author, however, too often ap-
plies to that which is without bounds, a sort
* " It is thus that man believes in primitive truth. "
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? GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 65
of logic to which circumscribed objects alone
are amenable. Leibnitz was a perfectly re-
ligious character; but, from this very cir-
cumstance, he believed it a duty to ground
the truths of religion upon mathematical rea-
soning, in order to support them on such
foundations as are admitted within the em-
pire of experience: this error proceeds from
a respect, oftener felt than acknowledged,
for men of cold and arid minds ; we attempt
to convince them in their own manner; we
acknowledge that arguments in a logical form
have more certainty than a proof from senti-
ment; and it is not true.
In the region of intellectual and religious
truths, of which Leibnitz has treated, we
must use consciousness in the room of de-
monstration. Leibnitz, wishing to adhere to
abstract reasoning, demands a sort of stretch
of attention which few minds can support.
Metaphysical works, that are founded neither
upon experience nor upon sentiment, singu-
larly fatigue the thinking power; and we
may imbibe from them a physical and moral
pain, so great, that by our obstinate en-
deavours to conquer it, we may shatter the
organs of reason in our heads. A poet,
Baggesen, has made Vertigo a divinity--we
VOL. III. p
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? 66 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
should recommend ourselves to the favour of
that goddess, when we are about to study
these works, which place us in such a man-
ner at the summit of ideas, that we have no
longer any ladder-steps to re-descend into
life.
The metaphysical and religious writers,
who are eloquent and feeling at the same
time (such as we have seen in some exam-
ples), are much better adapted to our nature.
Far from requiring the suppression of our
faculties of feeling, in order to make our fa-
culty of abstraction more precise, they bid
us think, feel, and wish, that all the strength
of our souls may aid us to penetrate into the
depths of heaven; but to cling close to ab-
straction is such an effort, that it is natural
enough for the generality of men to have
renounced the attempt, and to have thought
it more easy to admit nothing beyond what
is visible.
The experimental philosophy is complete
in itself; it is a whole, sufficiently vulgar,
tout compact, circumscribed, argumentative;
and while we adhere to the sort of reasoning
which is received in the commerce of the
world, we ought to be contented with it;
the immortal and the infinite are only felt
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? GE11MAN PHILOSOPHY. r 67
through the medium of the soul; the soul
alone can diffuse an interest over the higher
sort of metaphysics. We are very wrong to
persuade ourselves that the more abstract a
theory is, the more likely it is to guard us
against all illusion; for it is exactly by these
means that it may lead us into error. We
take the connexion of ideas for their proof;
we arrange our rank and file of chimeras with
precision; and we fancy that they are an
army. There is nothing but the genius of
sentiment that arises above experimental,
as well as above speculative philosophy;
there is no other genius but that, which can
carry conviction beyond the limits of human
reason.
It appears then to me, that, notwithstand-
ing my entire admiration for the strength of
mind and depth of genius in Leibnitz, we
should wish, in his writings upon questions
of metaphysical theology, more imagination
and sensibility; that we might repose from
thought by the indulgence of our feelings.
Leibnitz almost made a scruple of recurring
to it, fearing that he should have the ap-
pearance of using seductive arts in favour of
the truth: he was wrong; for sentiment is
truth itself in questions of this nature.
f2
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? 68 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
The objections which I have allowed my-
self to make to those works of Leibnitz,
which aim at the solution of truths insoluble
by reasoning, do not at air apply to his
writings on the formation of ideas in the
human mind; those writings are of a most
luminous clearness; they refer to a mystery
which man, to a certain degree, can pene-
trate; for he knows more of himself than of
the universe. The opinions of Leibnitz in
this respect tend, above all, to our moral
perfection, if it be true, as the German phi-
losophers have attempted to prove, that free-
will rests upon the doctrine which delivers
the soul from external objects, and that
virtue cannot exist without the perfect in-
dependence of the will.
Leibnitz has opposed, with admirable force
of logical reasoning, the system of Locke,
who attributes all our ideas to our sensations.
The advocates of this system had vaunted of
that well-known axiom, that there is nothing
in the intellect which has not first been in
the senses; and Leibnitz added to it this
sublime restriction--" Except the intellect
"itself*. " From this principle all the new
philosophy is derived, which so much influ-
* Nihil est in intdketu quod non fuerit in sensu, nisi iii-
teUectui ipse.
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? GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 69
ences the men of genius in Germany . This
philosophy also is experimental; for it en-
deavours to learn what is passing within
ourselves. It only substitutes the observation
of internal feeling for that of our external
sensations.
The doctrine of Locke gained many par-
tisans in Germany among those who endea-
voured, like Bonnet at Geneva, and many
other philosophers in England, to reconcile
this doctrine with the religious sentiments
which Locke himself always professed. The
genius of Leibnitz foresaw all the conse-
quences of this sort of metaphysics; and
that which has built his glory on an ever-
lasting foundation, is his having maintained
in Germany the philosophy of moral liberty
against that of sensual fatalism. While the
rest of Europe adopted those principles which
make the soul be considered as passive,
Leibnitz, with unshaken constancy, was the
defender of the ideal philosophy, such as his
genius had conceived it. It had no con-
nexion with the system of Berkeley; nor
with the reveries of the Greek sceptics upon
the non-existence of matter; but it main-
tained the moral being in his independence
and in his rights.
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? 70 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
CHAPTER VI.
*? I
Kant.
Ka NT lived even to a very advanced age,
and never quitted Konigsberg;--there, in the
midst.
of northern ice, he passed his whole
life in meditation upon the laws of human
intelligence. An indefatigable ardour for
study enabled him to acquire stores of
knowledge without number. Sciences, lan-
guages, literature, all were familiar to him;
and without seeking for glory, which he did
not enjoy till a very late period (not having
heard the noise of his renown before his old
age), he contented himself with the silent
pleasure of reflection. In solitude he con-
templated his mind with close attention;
the examination of his thoughts lent him
new strength to support his virtue; and
although he never intermeddled with the ar-
dent passions of men, he knew how to forge
arms for those who should be summoned to
combat those passions.
Except among the Greeks, we have hardly
any example of a life so strictly philosophi-
l^lIMISttlltbSMiai'Eia'nnii^^.
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? KANT. IX
cal; and that life itself answers for the sin-
cerity of the writer. To such an unstained
sincerity, we must further add an acute and
exact understanding, which served for a
corrector to his genius, when he suffered it
to carry him too far. This is enough, it
seems to me, to make us judge at least im-
partially of the persevering labours of such
a man. .
Kant first published several works on the
natural sciences; and he showed, in this
branch of study, so great a sagacity, that it
was he who first foresaw the existence of
the planet Uranus. Herschel himself, after
having discovered it, acknowledged that it
was Kant who announced the future event.
His treatise upon the nature of the human
understanding, entitled the " Examination of
"pure Reason," appeared near thirty years
ago, and this work was for some time un-
known; but when at length the treasures of
thought, which it contains, were discovered,
it produced such a sensation in Germany,
that almost all which has been accomplished
since, in literature as well as in philosophy,
has flowed from the impulse given by this
performance.
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? 72 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
To this treatise upon the human under-
standing succeeded the " Examination of
"practical Reason," which related to morals;
and the " Examination of'Judgment," which
had the nature of the beautiful for its object.
The same theory serves for a foundation to
these three treatises, which embrace the
laws of intellect, the principles of virtue,
and the contemplation of the beauties of
nature and of the arts.
I shall endeavour to give a sketch of the
principal ideas which this doctrine contains;
--whatever care I may take to explain it
clearly, I do not dissemble the necessity
there is of incessant attention to comprehend
it. A prince, who was learning mathema-
tics, grew impatient of the labour which
that study demanded. "It is indipensable,"
said his instructor, " for your highness to
M take the pains of studying, in order to
"learn the science; for there is no royal
"road in mathematics. " The French pub-
lic, which has so many reasons to fancy it-
self a prince, will allow me to suggest that
there is no royal road in metaphysics; and
that, to attain a conception of any theory
whatever, we must pass through the inter-
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? KANT. 73
mediate ways which conducted the author
himself to the results he exhibits.
The philosophy of materialism gave up
the human understanding to the empire of
external objects, and morals to personal in-
terest; and reduced the beautiful to the
agreeable. Kant wished to re-establish pri-
mitive truths and spontaneous activity in
the soul, conscience in morals, and the ideal
in the arts. Let us now examine in what
manner he has fulfilled these different under-
takings.
At the time the "Examination of pure
"Reason" made its appearance, there ex-
isted only two systems concerning the hu-
man understanding among thinking men:
the one, that of Locke, attributed all our
ideas to our sensations; the other, that of
Descartes and Leibnitz, endeavoured to de-
monstrate the spirituality and the activity of
the soul, free-will, in short, the whole doc-
trine of Idealism; but these two philoso-
phers rested their opinions upon proofs
purely speculative. I have exposed, in the
preceding. chapter, the inconveniences which
result from these efforts of abstraction, that
arrest, if we may use the expression, the
very blood in our veins, until our intellectual
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? 74 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
faculties alone reign within us. The alge-
braic method, applied to objects that we
cannot embrace by mere reasoning, leaves no
durable trace in the mind. While we are in
the act of perusing these writings upon high
philosophical conceptions, we believe that
we comprehend them; we think that we
believe them; but the arguments which have
appeared most convincing, very soon escape
from the memory.
If man, wearied with these efforts, con-
fines himself to the knowledge which he
gains by his senses, all will be melancholy
indeed for his soul. Will he have any idea
of immortality, when the forerunners of
destruction are engraven so deeply on the
countenance of mortals, and living nature
falls incessantly into dust? When all the
senses talk of death, what feeble hope can
we entertain of a resurrection? If man only
consulted his sensations, what idea would he
form of the supreme goodness? So many
afflictions dispute the mastery over our life;
so many hideous objects disfigure nature,
that the unfortunate created being curses his
existence a thousand times before the last
convulsion snatches it away. Let man, on
the contrary, reject the testimony of his
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? SAKT,<' '. >'. :? ? 75
senses, how will he guide himself on the
earth? and yet, if he trusts to them alone,
what enthusiasm, what morals, what religion
will be able to resist the repeated assaults
to which pain and pleasure alternately expose
him? ; i
Reflection wandered oyer this vast region
of uncertainty, when Kant endeavoured to
trace the limits of the two empires, that of
the senses and that of the soul; of external
and of intellectual nature. The strength of
thinking, and the wisdom with which he
marked these limits, were perhaps never
exhibited before: he did not lose himself
among the new systems concerning the
creation of the universe; he recognised
the bounds which the eternal mysteries set
to the human understanding, and (what will
be new perhaps to those who have only
heard Kant spoken of) there is no phi-
losopher more adverse, in numerous respects,
to metaphysics; he made himself so deeply
learned in this science, only to employ
against it the means it afforded him to
demonstrate its own insufficiency. We
might say of him, that, like a new Curtius,
he threw himself into the gulf of abstrac-
tion, in order to fill it up. ?
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? 76 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
Locke had victoriously combated the
doctrine of innate ideas in man; because he
has always represented ideas as making a
part of our experimental knowledge. The
examination of pure reason, that is to say
of the primitive faculties of which the in-
tellect is composed, did not fix his attention.
Leibnitz, as we have said above, pronounced
this sublime axiom : --" There is nothing
"in the intellect which does not come by
"the senses, except the intellect itself. "
Kant has acknowledged, as well as Locke,
that there are no innate ideas; but he has
endeavoured to enter into the sense of the
above axiom, by examining what are the
laws and the sentiments which constitute the
essence of the human soul, independently of
all experience. The "Examination of pure
"Reason" strives to show in what these
laws consist, and what are the objects upon
which they can be exercised.
Scepticism, to which materialism almost
always leads, was carried so far, that Hume
finished by overturning the foundation of all
reasoning, in his search after arguments
against the axiom, "that there is no effect
"without a cause. " And such is the unstea-
diness of himan nature when we do not
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? KANT. 77
place the principle of conviction in the centre
of the soul, that incredulity, which begins
by attacking the existence of the moral
world, at last gets rid of the material world
also, which it first used as an instrument to
destroy the other.
Kant wished to know whether absolute
certainty was attainable by the human un-
derstanding; and he only found it in our
necessary notions--that is to say, in all the
laws of our understanding, which are of such
a nature that we cannot conceive any thing
otherwise than as those laws represent it.
In the first class of the imperative forms
of our understanding are space and time.
Kant demonstrates that all our perceptions
are submitted to these two forms; he con-
cludes, from hence, that they exist in us, and
not in objects; and that, in this respect, it is
our understanding which gives laws to ex-
ternal nature, instead of receiving them from
it. Geometry, which measures space, and
arithmetic, which divides time, are sciences
of perfect demonstration, because they rest
upon the necessary notions of our under-
standing.
Truths acquired by experience never carry
absolute certainty with them: when we say,
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? 73 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
"the sun rises every day,"--" all men are
"mortal," &c. the imagination could 6gure
an exception to these truths, which experi-
ence alone makes us consider indubitable;
but Imagination herself cannot suppose any
thing out of the sphere of space and time;
and it is impossible to regard as the result of
custom (that is to say, of the constant repe-
tition of the same phenomena) those forms
of our thought which we impose upon
things: sensations may be doubtful; but
the prism through which we receive them
is immoveable.
To this primitive intuition of space and
time, we must add, or rather give, as a
foundation, the principles of reasoning, with-
out which we cannot comprehend any thing,
and which are the laws of our understanding;
the connexion of causes and effects--unity,
plurality, totality, possibility, reality, neces-
sity, &c*. Kant considers them all as
equally necessary notions; and he only raises
to the rank of real sciences such as are im-
mediately founded upon these notions, be-
cause it is in them alone that certainty can
* Kant gives the name of Category to the different
necessary notions of the understanding, of which he gives
a list.
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? KANT.
79
exist. The forms of reasoning have no
result, excepting when they are applied to
our judgment of external objects, and in
this application they are liable to error;
but they are not the less necessary in them-
selves ;--that is to say, we cannot depart
from them in any of our thoughts: it is
impossible for us to figure any thing out of
the sphere of the relations of causes and
effects, of possibility, quantity, &c. ; and
these notions are as inherent in our conception
as space and time. We perceive nothing ex-
cepting through the medium of the immove-
able laws of our manner of reasoning; there-
fore these 1 ws also are placed within our-
selves, and not without us.
In the German philosophy, those ideas are
called subjective, which grow out of the na-
ture of our understanding and its faculties;
and all those ideas objective, which are excited
by sensations. Whatever may be the deno-
mination which we adopt in this respect, it
appears to me that the examination of our
intellect agrees with the prevailing thought
of Kant; namely, the distinction he esta-
blishes between the forms of our under-
standing and the objects which we know
according to those forms; afld whether
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? 80 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
he adheres to abstract conceptions, or whe-
ther he appeals, in religion and morals, to
sentiments which he also considers as in-
dependent of experience, nothing is more
luminous than the line of demarcation which
he traces between what comes to us by sen-
sation, and what belongs to the spontaneous
action of our souls.
Some expressions in the doctrine of Kant
having been ill interpreted, it has been pre-
tended that he believed in that doctrine of
innate ideas, which describes them as en-
graved upon the soul before we have dis-
covered them. Other German philosophers,
more allied to the system of Plato, have, in
effect, thought that the type of the world
was in the human understanding, and that
man could not conceive the universe if he
had not in himself the innate image of it;
but this doctrine is not touched upon by
Kant: he reduces the intellectual sciences to
three--logic, metaphysics, and mathematics.
Logic teaches nothing by itself; but as it
rests upon the laws of our understanding, it is
incontestable in its principles, abstractedly
considered: this science cannot lead to truth,
excepting in its application to ideas and
things; its principles are innate, its applica-
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? KANT. 81
tion is experimental. In metaphysics, Kant
denies its existence; because he pretends
that reasoning cannot find a place beyond
the sphere of experience. Mathematics alone
appear to him to depend immediately upon
the notion of space and of time--that is to
say, upon the laws of our understanding an-
terior to experience. He endeavours to prove,
that mathematics are not a simple analysis,
but a synthetic, positive, creative science,
and certain of itself, without the necessity of
our recurring to experience to be assured of
its truth. We may study in the work of
Kant the arguments upon which he supports
this way of thinking; but at least it is true,
that there is no man more adverse to what is
called the philosophy of the dreamers; and
that he must rather have had an inclina-
tion for a dry and didactic mode of think-
ing, although the object of his doctrine
be to raise the human species from its de-
gradation, under the philosophy of ma-
terialism.
Far from rejecting experience, Kant con-
siders the business of life as nothing but the
action of our innate faculties upon the se-
veral sorts of knowledge which come. to us
from without. He believed that experience
would be nothing but a chaos without the
VOL. III. G
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? 82 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
laws of the understanding ; but that the laws
of the understanding have no other object
than the elements of thought afforded it by
experience. It follows, that metaphysics
themselves can teach us nothing beyond
these limits; and that it is to sentiment that
we ought to attribute the foreknowledge and
the conviction of every thing that transcends
the bounds of the visible world.
When it is attempted to use* reasoning
alone for the establishment of religious truths,
it becomes a most pliable instrument, which
can equally attack and defend them; be-
cause we cannot, on this occasion, find any
point of support in experience. Kant places
upon two parallel lines the arguments for
and against the liberty of man, the immor-
tality of the soul, the temporary or eternal
duration of the world ; and it is to sentiment
that he appeals to weigh down the balance,
for the metaphysical proofs appear to him of
equal strength on either side *. Perhaps he
was wrong to push the scepticism of rea-
soning to such an extent; but it was to anni-
hilate this scepticism with more certainty,
by keeping certain questions clear from the
abstract discussions which gave it birth.
? These opposite arguments on great metaphysical ques-
tions are called " Antinomies" in Kant's writings.
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? KANT. 83
It would be unjust to suspect the sincere
piety of Kant, because he has maintained
the equality of the reasonings for and against
the great questions in the transcendental
metaphysics. It appears to me, on the con*
trary, that there is candour in this. avowal.
Such few minds are able to comprehend these
reasonings, and those who are able are so
disposed to combat each other, that it is
rendering a great service to religious faith to
banish metaphysics from all questions that
. relate to the existence of God, to freerwilJ,
to the origin of good and evil.
? GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 57
The greatness of soul that appeared among
the Romans, gave a sublime character to
their patriotism and their morals ; but this
consequence must be attributed to their
republican institutions. When liberty no
longer existed in Rome, a selfish and sensual
luxury was seen to reign there, with almost
an undivided empire; excepting that of an
adroit sort of political knowledge, which
directed every mind towards observation and
experience. The Romans retained nothing
of their past study of Grecian literature and
philosophy but a taste for the arts; and this
taste itself very soon degenerated into gross
enjoyments.
The influence of Rome did not exert itself
over the northern nations. They were al-
most entirely civilized by Christianity ;--and
their ancient religion, which contained
within it the principles of chivalry, bore no
resemblance to the Paganism of the South.
There was to be found a spirit of heroica!
and generous self-devotion; an enthusiasm
for women, which made a noble worship of
love; in a word, as the rigours of the climate
prevented man from plunging himself into
the delights of nature, he had so much the
keener relish for the pleasures of the soul
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? 58 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
It may be objected to me, that the Greeks
had the same religion and the same climate
as the Romans ; and that yet they have
given themselves up more than any other
people to speculative philosophy; but may
we not attribute to the Indians some of the
intellectual systems developed among the
Greeks? The ideal philosophy of Pytha-
goras and Plato ill agrees with Paganism,
such as it appears to us; historical traditions
also lead us to believe that . Egypt was
the medium through which the nations of
southern Europe received 'the influence of
the East. The philosophy of Epicurus is the
only philosophy of truly Grecian origin.
Whatever may become of these conjec-
tures, it is certain that the spirituality of the
soul, and all the thoughts derived from it,
have been easily naturalized among the peo-
ple of the North; and of all these nations,
the Germans have ever showed themselves
the most inclined to contemplative philo-
sophy. Leibnitz is their Bacon and their
Descartes. We find in this excellent genius
all the qualities which the German philoso-
phers in general glory to aim at: immense
erudition, perfect good faith, enthusiasm
hidden under strict form and method. He
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? GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 5. 9
had profoundly studied theology, jurispru-
dence, history, languages, mathematics, na-
tural philosophy, chemistry; for he was con-
vinced that an universality of knowledge
was necessary to constitute a superior being
in any department: in short, every thing in
Leibnitz displayed those virtues which are
allied to sublimity of thought, and which
deserve at once our admiration and our
respect.
His works may be divided into three
branches--the exact sciences, theological
philosophy, and the philosophy of the mind.
Every one knows that Leibnitz was the rival
of Newton, in the theory of calculation.
The knowledge of mathematics is very
useful in metaphysical studies; abstract rea-
soning does not exist in perfection out of
algebra and geometry; I shall endeavour to *
show in another place the unsuitableness of
this sort of reasoning, when we attempt to
exercise it upon a subject that is allied in
any manner to sensibility; but it confers
upon the human mind a power of attention,
that renders it much more capable of ana-
lysing itself: we must also know the laws and
the forces of the universe, to study man
under all his relations. There is such an
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? 60 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
analogy, and such a difference, between the
physical and the moral world, their re-
semblances and their diversity lend each
other such light, that it is impossible to be
a learned man of the first rank without the
assistance of speculative philosophy, nor a
speculative philosopher without having stu-
died the positive sciences.
Locke and Condiliac had not sufficiently
attended to these sciences ; but Leibnitz had
in this respect an incontestable superiority.
Descartes also was a very great mathema-
tician; and it is to be remarked, that the
greater part of the advocates for the ideal
philosophy have made an unbounded use of
their intellectual faculties. The exercise of
the mind, as well as that of the heart, im-
parts a feeling of internal activity, of which
all those beings who abandon themselves to
the impressions that come from without are
rarely capable.
The first class of the writings of Leibnitz
contains those which we call theological,
because they are directed to truths which
form part of the support of religion; and the
theory of the human mind is included in the
second class. In the first class he treats of
the origin of good and evil--of the divine
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? GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 6l
prescience;--in a word, of those primitive
questions which lie beyond the bounds of
human intelligence. I do not pretend to cen-
sure, by this expression, those great men who,
from the times of Pythagoras and Plato down
to our own, have been attracted towards these
lofty philosophical speculations. Genius does
not set bounds to itself, until it has struggled
for a long time against that hard necessity.
Who can possess the faculty of thinking,
and not endeavour to learn the origin and
the end of the things of this world?
Every thing that lives upon earth, except-
ing man, seems to be ignorant of itself. He
alone knows that he will die, and this awful
truth awakens his interest for all the grand
thoughts which are attached to it. From the
time that we are capable of reflection we
resolve, or rather we think we resolve, after
our own manner, the philosophical questions
which may explain the destiny of man; but
it has been granted to no one to compre-
hend that destiny altogether. Every man
views it from a different point; every man
has his own philosophy, his poetry, his love.
This philosophy is in accord with the peculiar
bms of his character and his mind. When
we raise ourselves towards infinity, a thou-
i
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? 62 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
sand explanations may be equally true,
although different; for questions without
bounds have thousands of aspects, one of
which may be sufficient to occupy the whole
duration of existence.
If the mystery of the universe is above the
understanding of man, still the study of this
mystery gives more expansion to the mind.
It is in metaphysics as it is in alchemy: in
searching for the philosopher's stone, in en-
deavouring to discover an impossibility, we
, meet upon the road with truths which would
have remained unknown to us: besides, we
cannot hinder a meditative being from be-
stowing some time at least upon the tran-
scendent philosophy; this ebullition of spi-
ritual nature cannot be kept back, without
bringing that nature into disgrace.
The pre-established harmony of Leibnitz,
which he believed to be a great discovery,
has been refuted with success; he flattered
himself that he could explain the relations
between mind and matter, by considering
them both as instruments tuned beforehand,
which re-echo, and answer, and imitate each
other mutually. His monads, of which he
constitutes the simple elements of the uni-
verse, are but an hypothesis as gratuitous
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? GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 63
as all those which have been used to explain
the origin of things. But in what a singular
state of perplexity is the human mind! In-
cessantly attracted towards the secret of its
being, it finds that secret equally impossible
to be discovered, or to be banished from its
thoughts.
The Persians say, that Zoroaster interro-
gated the Deity, and asked how the world
had begun, when it would end, what was
the origin of good and evil? The Deity an-
swered to all these questions--" Do what is
"good, and gain immortality. " The point
which particularly constitutes the excellence
of this reply, is this--that it does not dis-
courage man from the most sublime medi-
tations; it only teaches him, that by con-
science and sentiment he may exalt himself
to the most lofty conceptions of philosophy.
Leibnitz was an idealist, who founded his
system solely upon reasoning; and from
thence it arises, that he has pushed his ab-
stractions too far, and that he has not suffi-
ciently supported his theory upon inward
persuasion--the only true foundation of that
which is above the understanding: in short,
reason upon the liberty of man, and you
will not believe it; lay your hand upon your
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? 64 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
conscience, and you will not be able to
doubt it. Consequence and contradiction,
in the sense that we attach to either of these
terms, do not exist within the sphere of the
great questions concerning the liberty of
man, the origin of good and evil, the divine
prescience, &c. In these questions senti-
ment is almost always in opposition to rea-
son; in order to teach mankind, that what
he calls incredible in the order of earthly
things, is perhaps the supreme truth under
universal relations.
Dante has expressed a grand philosophical
thought by this verse :--
A guisa del ver primo che l'uom crede*.
We must believe certain truths as we believe
our own existence; it is the soul which re-
veals them to us; and reasonings of every
kind are never more than feeble streams de-
rived from this fountain.
The Theodicea of Leibnitz treats of the
divine prescience, and of the cause of good
and evil: it is one of the most profound and
argumentative works upon the theory of the
infinite; the author, however, too often ap-
plies to that which is without bounds, a sort
* " It is thus that man believes in primitive truth. "
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? GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 65
of logic to which circumscribed objects alone
are amenable. Leibnitz was a perfectly re-
ligious character; but, from this very cir-
cumstance, he believed it a duty to ground
the truths of religion upon mathematical rea-
soning, in order to support them on such
foundations as are admitted within the em-
pire of experience: this error proceeds from
a respect, oftener felt than acknowledged,
for men of cold and arid minds ; we attempt
to convince them in their own manner; we
acknowledge that arguments in a logical form
have more certainty than a proof from senti-
ment; and it is not true.
In the region of intellectual and religious
truths, of which Leibnitz has treated, we
must use consciousness in the room of de-
monstration. Leibnitz, wishing to adhere to
abstract reasoning, demands a sort of stretch
of attention which few minds can support.
Metaphysical works, that are founded neither
upon experience nor upon sentiment, singu-
larly fatigue the thinking power; and we
may imbibe from them a physical and moral
pain, so great, that by our obstinate en-
deavours to conquer it, we may shatter the
organs of reason in our heads. A poet,
Baggesen, has made Vertigo a divinity--we
VOL. III. p
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? 66 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
should recommend ourselves to the favour of
that goddess, when we are about to study
these works, which place us in such a man-
ner at the summit of ideas, that we have no
longer any ladder-steps to re-descend into
life.
The metaphysical and religious writers,
who are eloquent and feeling at the same
time (such as we have seen in some exam-
ples), are much better adapted to our nature.
Far from requiring the suppression of our
faculties of feeling, in order to make our fa-
culty of abstraction more precise, they bid
us think, feel, and wish, that all the strength
of our souls may aid us to penetrate into the
depths of heaven; but to cling close to ab-
straction is such an effort, that it is natural
enough for the generality of men to have
renounced the attempt, and to have thought
it more easy to admit nothing beyond what
is visible.
The experimental philosophy is complete
in itself; it is a whole, sufficiently vulgar,
tout compact, circumscribed, argumentative;
and while we adhere to the sort of reasoning
which is received in the commerce of the
world, we ought to be contented with it;
the immortal and the infinite are only felt
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? GE11MAN PHILOSOPHY. r 67
through the medium of the soul; the soul
alone can diffuse an interest over the higher
sort of metaphysics. We are very wrong to
persuade ourselves that the more abstract a
theory is, the more likely it is to guard us
against all illusion; for it is exactly by these
means that it may lead us into error. We
take the connexion of ideas for their proof;
we arrange our rank and file of chimeras with
precision; and we fancy that they are an
army. There is nothing but the genius of
sentiment that arises above experimental,
as well as above speculative philosophy;
there is no other genius but that, which can
carry conviction beyond the limits of human
reason.
It appears then to me, that, notwithstand-
ing my entire admiration for the strength of
mind and depth of genius in Leibnitz, we
should wish, in his writings upon questions
of metaphysical theology, more imagination
and sensibility; that we might repose from
thought by the indulgence of our feelings.
Leibnitz almost made a scruple of recurring
to it, fearing that he should have the ap-
pearance of using seductive arts in favour of
the truth: he was wrong; for sentiment is
truth itself in questions of this nature.
f2
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? 68 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
The objections which I have allowed my-
self to make to those works of Leibnitz,
which aim at the solution of truths insoluble
by reasoning, do not at air apply to his
writings on the formation of ideas in the
human mind; those writings are of a most
luminous clearness; they refer to a mystery
which man, to a certain degree, can pene-
trate; for he knows more of himself than of
the universe. The opinions of Leibnitz in
this respect tend, above all, to our moral
perfection, if it be true, as the German phi-
losophers have attempted to prove, that free-
will rests upon the doctrine which delivers
the soul from external objects, and that
virtue cannot exist without the perfect in-
dependence of the will.
Leibnitz has opposed, with admirable force
of logical reasoning, the system of Locke,
who attributes all our ideas to our sensations.
The advocates of this system had vaunted of
that well-known axiom, that there is nothing
in the intellect which has not first been in
the senses; and Leibnitz added to it this
sublime restriction--" Except the intellect
"itself*. " From this principle all the new
philosophy is derived, which so much influ-
* Nihil est in intdketu quod non fuerit in sensu, nisi iii-
teUectui ipse.
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? GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 69
ences the men of genius in Germany . This
philosophy also is experimental; for it en-
deavours to learn what is passing within
ourselves. It only substitutes the observation
of internal feeling for that of our external
sensations.
The doctrine of Locke gained many par-
tisans in Germany among those who endea-
voured, like Bonnet at Geneva, and many
other philosophers in England, to reconcile
this doctrine with the religious sentiments
which Locke himself always professed. The
genius of Leibnitz foresaw all the conse-
quences of this sort of metaphysics; and
that which has built his glory on an ever-
lasting foundation, is his having maintained
in Germany the philosophy of moral liberty
against that of sensual fatalism. While the
rest of Europe adopted those principles which
make the soul be considered as passive,
Leibnitz, with unshaken constancy, was the
defender of the ideal philosophy, such as his
genius had conceived it. It had no con-
nexion with the system of Berkeley; nor
with the reveries of the Greek sceptics upon
the non-existence of matter; but it main-
tained the moral being in his independence
and in his rights.
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? 70 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
CHAPTER VI.
*? I
Kant.
Ka NT lived even to a very advanced age,
and never quitted Konigsberg;--there, in the
midst.
of northern ice, he passed his whole
life in meditation upon the laws of human
intelligence. An indefatigable ardour for
study enabled him to acquire stores of
knowledge without number. Sciences, lan-
guages, literature, all were familiar to him;
and without seeking for glory, which he did
not enjoy till a very late period (not having
heard the noise of his renown before his old
age), he contented himself with the silent
pleasure of reflection. In solitude he con-
templated his mind with close attention;
the examination of his thoughts lent him
new strength to support his virtue; and
although he never intermeddled with the ar-
dent passions of men, he knew how to forge
arms for those who should be summoned to
combat those passions.
Except among the Greeks, we have hardly
any example of a life so strictly philosophi-
l^lIMISttlltbSMiai'Eia'nnii^^.
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? KANT. IX
cal; and that life itself answers for the sin-
cerity of the writer. To such an unstained
sincerity, we must further add an acute and
exact understanding, which served for a
corrector to his genius, when he suffered it
to carry him too far. This is enough, it
seems to me, to make us judge at least im-
partially of the persevering labours of such
a man. .
Kant first published several works on the
natural sciences; and he showed, in this
branch of study, so great a sagacity, that it
was he who first foresaw the existence of
the planet Uranus. Herschel himself, after
having discovered it, acknowledged that it
was Kant who announced the future event.
His treatise upon the nature of the human
understanding, entitled the " Examination of
"pure Reason," appeared near thirty years
ago, and this work was for some time un-
known; but when at length the treasures of
thought, which it contains, were discovered,
it produced such a sensation in Germany,
that almost all which has been accomplished
since, in literature as well as in philosophy,
has flowed from the impulse given by this
performance.
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? 72 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
To this treatise upon the human under-
standing succeeded the " Examination of
"practical Reason," which related to morals;
and the " Examination of'Judgment," which
had the nature of the beautiful for its object.
The same theory serves for a foundation to
these three treatises, which embrace the
laws of intellect, the principles of virtue,
and the contemplation of the beauties of
nature and of the arts.
I shall endeavour to give a sketch of the
principal ideas which this doctrine contains;
--whatever care I may take to explain it
clearly, I do not dissemble the necessity
there is of incessant attention to comprehend
it. A prince, who was learning mathema-
tics, grew impatient of the labour which
that study demanded. "It is indipensable,"
said his instructor, " for your highness to
M take the pains of studying, in order to
"learn the science; for there is no royal
"road in mathematics. " The French pub-
lic, which has so many reasons to fancy it-
self a prince, will allow me to suggest that
there is no royal road in metaphysics; and
that, to attain a conception of any theory
whatever, we must pass through the inter-
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? KANT. 73
mediate ways which conducted the author
himself to the results he exhibits.
The philosophy of materialism gave up
the human understanding to the empire of
external objects, and morals to personal in-
terest; and reduced the beautiful to the
agreeable. Kant wished to re-establish pri-
mitive truths and spontaneous activity in
the soul, conscience in morals, and the ideal
in the arts. Let us now examine in what
manner he has fulfilled these different under-
takings.
At the time the "Examination of pure
"Reason" made its appearance, there ex-
isted only two systems concerning the hu-
man understanding among thinking men:
the one, that of Locke, attributed all our
ideas to our sensations; the other, that of
Descartes and Leibnitz, endeavoured to de-
monstrate the spirituality and the activity of
the soul, free-will, in short, the whole doc-
trine of Idealism; but these two philoso-
phers rested their opinions upon proofs
purely speculative. I have exposed, in the
preceding. chapter, the inconveniences which
result from these efforts of abstraction, that
arrest, if we may use the expression, the
very blood in our veins, until our intellectual
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? 74 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
faculties alone reign within us. The alge-
braic method, applied to objects that we
cannot embrace by mere reasoning, leaves no
durable trace in the mind. While we are in
the act of perusing these writings upon high
philosophical conceptions, we believe that
we comprehend them; we think that we
believe them; but the arguments which have
appeared most convincing, very soon escape
from the memory.
If man, wearied with these efforts, con-
fines himself to the knowledge which he
gains by his senses, all will be melancholy
indeed for his soul. Will he have any idea
of immortality, when the forerunners of
destruction are engraven so deeply on the
countenance of mortals, and living nature
falls incessantly into dust? When all the
senses talk of death, what feeble hope can
we entertain of a resurrection? If man only
consulted his sensations, what idea would he
form of the supreme goodness? So many
afflictions dispute the mastery over our life;
so many hideous objects disfigure nature,
that the unfortunate created being curses his
existence a thousand times before the last
convulsion snatches it away. Let man, on
the contrary, reject the testimony of his
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? SAKT,<' '. >'. :? ? 75
senses, how will he guide himself on the
earth? and yet, if he trusts to them alone,
what enthusiasm, what morals, what religion
will be able to resist the repeated assaults
to which pain and pleasure alternately expose
him? ; i
Reflection wandered oyer this vast region
of uncertainty, when Kant endeavoured to
trace the limits of the two empires, that of
the senses and that of the soul; of external
and of intellectual nature. The strength of
thinking, and the wisdom with which he
marked these limits, were perhaps never
exhibited before: he did not lose himself
among the new systems concerning the
creation of the universe; he recognised
the bounds which the eternal mysteries set
to the human understanding, and (what will
be new perhaps to those who have only
heard Kant spoken of) there is no phi-
losopher more adverse, in numerous respects,
to metaphysics; he made himself so deeply
learned in this science, only to employ
against it the means it afforded him to
demonstrate its own insufficiency. We
might say of him, that, like a new Curtius,
he threw himself into the gulf of abstrac-
tion, in order to fill it up. ?
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? 76 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
Locke had victoriously combated the
doctrine of innate ideas in man; because he
has always represented ideas as making a
part of our experimental knowledge. The
examination of pure reason, that is to say
of the primitive faculties of which the in-
tellect is composed, did not fix his attention.
Leibnitz, as we have said above, pronounced
this sublime axiom : --" There is nothing
"in the intellect which does not come by
"the senses, except the intellect itself. "
Kant has acknowledged, as well as Locke,
that there are no innate ideas; but he has
endeavoured to enter into the sense of the
above axiom, by examining what are the
laws and the sentiments which constitute the
essence of the human soul, independently of
all experience. The "Examination of pure
"Reason" strives to show in what these
laws consist, and what are the objects upon
which they can be exercised.
Scepticism, to which materialism almost
always leads, was carried so far, that Hume
finished by overturning the foundation of all
reasoning, in his search after arguments
against the axiom, "that there is no effect
"without a cause. " And such is the unstea-
diness of himan nature when we do not
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? KANT. 77
place the principle of conviction in the centre
of the soul, that incredulity, which begins
by attacking the existence of the moral
world, at last gets rid of the material world
also, which it first used as an instrument to
destroy the other.
Kant wished to know whether absolute
certainty was attainable by the human un-
derstanding; and he only found it in our
necessary notions--that is to say, in all the
laws of our understanding, which are of such
a nature that we cannot conceive any thing
otherwise than as those laws represent it.
In the first class of the imperative forms
of our understanding are space and time.
Kant demonstrates that all our perceptions
are submitted to these two forms; he con-
cludes, from hence, that they exist in us, and
not in objects; and that, in this respect, it is
our understanding which gives laws to ex-
ternal nature, instead of receiving them from
it. Geometry, which measures space, and
arithmetic, which divides time, are sciences
of perfect demonstration, because they rest
upon the necessary notions of our under-
standing.
Truths acquired by experience never carry
absolute certainty with them: when we say,
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? 73 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
"the sun rises every day,"--" all men are
"mortal," &c. the imagination could 6gure
an exception to these truths, which experi-
ence alone makes us consider indubitable;
but Imagination herself cannot suppose any
thing out of the sphere of space and time;
and it is impossible to regard as the result of
custom (that is to say, of the constant repe-
tition of the same phenomena) those forms
of our thought which we impose upon
things: sensations may be doubtful; but
the prism through which we receive them
is immoveable.
To this primitive intuition of space and
time, we must add, or rather give, as a
foundation, the principles of reasoning, with-
out which we cannot comprehend any thing,
and which are the laws of our understanding;
the connexion of causes and effects--unity,
plurality, totality, possibility, reality, neces-
sity, &c*. Kant considers them all as
equally necessary notions; and he only raises
to the rank of real sciences such as are im-
mediately founded upon these notions, be-
cause it is in them alone that certainty can
* Kant gives the name of Category to the different
necessary notions of the understanding, of which he gives
a list.
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? KANT.
79
exist. The forms of reasoning have no
result, excepting when they are applied to
our judgment of external objects, and in
this application they are liable to error;
but they are not the less necessary in them-
selves ;--that is to say, we cannot depart
from them in any of our thoughts: it is
impossible for us to figure any thing out of
the sphere of the relations of causes and
effects, of possibility, quantity, &c. ; and
these notions are as inherent in our conception
as space and time. We perceive nothing ex-
cepting through the medium of the immove-
able laws of our manner of reasoning; there-
fore these 1 ws also are placed within our-
selves, and not without us.
In the German philosophy, those ideas are
called subjective, which grow out of the na-
ture of our understanding and its faculties;
and all those ideas objective, which are excited
by sensations. Whatever may be the deno-
mination which we adopt in this respect, it
appears to me that the examination of our
intellect agrees with the prevailing thought
of Kant; namely, the distinction he esta-
blishes between the forms of our under-
standing and the objects which we know
according to those forms; afld whether
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? 80 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
he adheres to abstract conceptions, or whe-
ther he appeals, in religion and morals, to
sentiments which he also considers as in-
dependent of experience, nothing is more
luminous than the line of demarcation which
he traces between what comes to us by sen-
sation, and what belongs to the spontaneous
action of our souls.
Some expressions in the doctrine of Kant
having been ill interpreted, it has been pre-
tended that he believed in that doctrine of
innate ideas, which describes them as en-
graved upon the soul before we have dis-
covered them. Other German philosophers,
more allied to the system of Plato, have, in
effect, thought that the type of the world
was in the human understanding, and that
man could not conceive the universe if he
had not in himself the innate image of it;
but this doctrine is not touched upon by
Kant: he reduces the intellectual sciences to
three--logic, metaphysics, and mathematics.
Logic teaches nothing by itself; but as it
rests upon the laws of our understanding, it is
incontestable in its principles, abstractedly
considered: this science cannot lead to truth,
excepting in its application to ideas and
things; its principles are innate, its applica-
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? KANT. 81
tion is experimental. In metaphysics, Kant
denies its existence; because he pretends
that reasoning cannot find a place beyond
the sphere of experience. Mathematics alone
appear to him to depend immediately upon
the notion of space and of time--that is to
say, upon the laws of our understanding an-
terior to experience. He endeavours to prove,
that mathematics are not a simple analysis,
but a synthetic, positive, creative science,
and certain of itself, without the necessity of
our recurring to experience to be assured of
its truth. We may study in the work of
Kant the arguments upon which he supports
this way of thinking; but at least it is true,
that there is no man more adverse to what is
called the philosophy of the dreamers; and
that he must rather have had an inclina-
tion for a dry and didactic mode of think-
ing, although the object of his doctrine
be to raise the human species from its de-
gradation, under the philosophy of ma-
terialism.
Far from rejecting experience, Kant con-
siders the business of life as nothing but the
action of our innate faculties upon the se-
veral sorts of knowledge which come. to us
from without. He believed that experience
would be nothing but a chaos without the
VOL. III. G
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? 82 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
laws of the understanding ; but that the laws
of the understanding have no other object
than the elements of thought afforded it by
experience. It follows, that metaphysics
themselves can teach us nothing beyond
these limits; and that it is to sentiment that
we ought to attribute the foreknowledge and
the conviction of every thing that transcends
the bounds of the visible world.
When it is attempted to use* reasoning
alone for the establishment of religious truths,
it becomes a most pliable instrument, which
can equally attack and defend them; be-
cause we cannot, on this occasion, find any
point of support in experience. Kant places
upon two parallel lines the arguments for
and against the liberty of man, the immor-
tality of the soul, the temporary or eternal
duration of the world ; and it is to sentiment
that he appeals to weigh down the balance,
for the metaphysical proofs appear to him of
equal strength on either side *. Perhaps he
was wrong to push the scepticism of rea-
soning to such an extent; but it was to anni-
hilate this scepticism with more certainty,
by keeping certain questions clear from the
abstract discussions which gave it birth.
? These opposite arguments on great metaphysical ques-
tions are called " Antinomies" in Kant's writings.
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? KANT. 83
It would be unjust to suspect the sincere
piety of Kant, because he has maintained
the equality of the reasonings for and against
the great questions in the transcendental
metaphysics. It appears to me, on the con*
trary, that there is candour in this. avowal.
Such few minds are able to comprehend these
reasonings, and those who are able are so
disposed to combat each other, that it is
rendering a great service to religious faith to
banish metaphysics from all questions that
. relate to the existence of God, to freerwilJ,
to the origin of good and evil.
