The union of the subjective and the objective in all knowledge is thus determined, and faith in the validity of ideas and the conclusions of science and morals justified, by showing the possibility of an à priori knowledge, and the necessity of accepting the original conceptions of the understanding.

The influence of the Transcendental Philosophy upon German thought was immense. It completely extinguished a shallow species of Skepticism, which had begun to make its appearance, and gave birth to a school of Philosophy and a series of speculations, which have given Germany the intellectual empire of the world.

foundly contemplative and philosophic spirit, [ our intellectual nature are analyzed, and she brought to the discussion of the great shown to have their constituent forms or questions of Philosophy, an affluence of primitive laws, from which all the phenomthought and an array of great names unsur- ena coming within their respective spheres passed in ancient or modern times. To take quality and form. By the transmuting resolve all the great problems of thought, process of these primitive laws or categories, and to throw open the entire arcana of ex- the mind proceeds from simple objective existence, was her ambitious aim. The source istence, the only thing given in the Sensiand validity of ideas, the essence and origin bility, through sensations, notions, and judgof being, and all the mysteries connected ments, to the ultimate ideas of Soul, Nature, with the existence of the soul, of nature and and God, the last generalizations of the God, came within the range of her exhaustive Reason. speculations. The constitutional nature of Germanic mind determined the direction of its inquiries. All its native impulses and habits of thought were at war with Sensationalism. Its speculative tendency, its profound reflectiveness, and its lofty enthusiasm, all indicated its affinities with Idealism, as the system most in harmony with its spiritualistic sympathies and faith. Here, then, we may look for a counter-current and corrective to the sensualism of the French and English schools, and a protest against the skeptical doctrine advanced by Hume and his less able coadjutors upon the Continent. Of Liebnitz, chronologically connected with this period, but philosophically related to the Cartesians, we have already spoken. He controverted the theory of Locke regarding the origin of ideas, adding to the maxium of the Sensationalists, "Nihil in intellectu, quod non prius in sensu," his noted "Præter intellectum ipsum." We recognize here the germ of that system of "Critical Philosophy" which has placed the name of Kant so high on the roll of philosophic fame. It was the great merit of Kant to have given to the laws and operations of the human mind a more thorough analysis than they had before received. His method was psychological, and he pursued it with rigorous severity until he stood within the very penetralia of consciousness. He distinguished between the respective functions of the Sensibility, the Understanding, and the Reason, and indicated the agency of each in the genesis of ideas. He showed that while all knowledge begins with experience, it does not all come from experience-post hoc, non propter hoc-a thought which Cousin has so fully developed in his distinction between the logical and chronological antecedence of ideas. Each of the three great functions of

Kant, as we have seen, sought to determine the exact proportions and agency of subject and object, the me and the not-me, in every act of perception and thought. In this office he had assigned almost the entire agency to the subjective, but yet allowing a bare objective existence, without quality or attribute, to furnish the unformed material of knowledge. Here, then, was a tendency to pure subjective Idealism, which nothing was needed to complete but an elimination of the realistic element, already held by so feeble a tenure. To effect this was the work of Fichte. Fixing his eye upon the idealistic side of the Kantean philosophy, he pushed it to its extreme development. Kant had shown that all our actual knowledge is limited to the facts of consciousness. Here, then, Fichte takes his position, and maintains the exclusive office and claims of the Ego. We can know nothing beyond the field of our own consciousness; whatever is given in that, we may accept, but farther we may not go, for the consciousness cannot transcend itself; all our sensations and perceptions are purely subjective; they are nothing more than affections of mind. That they have any corresponding objective reality is

a supposition wholly conjectural. It is an stitutes the universe. To trace the process inference which Faith may accept, but which of this development is the office of PhiloReason cannot prove. For it is clear that sophy; an office which becomes possible we can have no knowledge of any thing pre- through the intimacy of relation which the vious to its coming under the laws and con- individual mind sustains to the Absolute as ditions of our own subjectivity; but the im- one of its modes of manifestation. position of these laws and conditions, it is This process of self-development is effected admitted, determines the entire character, through the operation of a law in which form, and properties of the thing known. Philosophy detects three agencies or moveHence it can never be proved that the ob- ments. The first is the reflective movejective fact corresponds with the subjective ment, or the attempt of the Infinite to emidea. Neither does such subjective know- body itself in the finite. This gives nature. ledge necessarily correlate simple objective The second is called the subsumptive moveexistence, as was held by Kant, any more ment, or the effort of the Absolute, having than it does correspondence. The fact that embodied itself in the finite, to return again the intelligence forces us to believe in an ex- to the Infinite. This gives mind, which is ternal world, proves nothing; for the intelli- nature arrived at consciousness. The third gence itself is a part of that very subject- movement consists in the union of the other ivity, and is thus necessitated by the impo- two, and is the blending of the subjective sition of its laws. Mind, therefore, which is and the objective, of mind and matter in the defined as the power of thinking, is the only Absolute as realized. The development of real existence. Being an active principle, this original system, which we cannot further with impulses to self-development, it projects pursue, is extended throughout the entire its activities out of itself; but, meeting with phenomena and relations of being. This limitations to its free activity, as it must-same law, in its three-fold movement, is else it would proceed to infinity-it objectifies these limitations, and calls them the external world. Thus the me determines the not-me, and creates what it beholds. The universe becomes wholly spiritual; "mind precipitated" becomes matter, and all outward being is but the sensized product of thought. Knowledge and existence, therefore, are synonymous, and subject and object identified as one.

The intense Egoism which distinguishes these speculations of Fichte marks the idealistic phase of the Kantean philosophy in its highest expression. It had reached its point of culmination in a system of pure subjective Idealism.

traced through all the realms of nature and mind. It is shown to operate entire in the most subordinate, as well as in the highest ranges and gradations of existence. It is made to resolve all the great problems of Philosophy, and to illume with new light and meaning the domains of Science and Literature and Religion and Art. Whatever opinion there may be regarding the merits of Schelling's system as a solution of the enigma of the universe, it must be admitted, when viewed in its entire development, as one of the most remarkable examples of original, vigorous and comprehensive thinking that Philosophy and Genius have ever given to the world.

Closely related to Fichte was Schelling. Its development of the affinities and inHe was an Idealist, but his Idealism devel- terdependence of all modes and gradations oped itself in another direction. He did of being, and its unfolding of the secret connot, with Fichte, sink all existence in the Ego, nections and correspondences of physical, inbut he allowed the reality of objective being. tellectual, and ethical science, was a masterWith Fichte, he identified subject and ob- ly achievement of intellect, and a rich contriject, but not upon the same plane. He car-bution to the treasury of Philosophy and ried the union to a higher point, and identi- Thought. We had purposed to speak of fied them in the Absolute. This absolute, the relations of the "Identity-Philosophy" in which exists potentially all phenomenal to some of the peculiar phases of modern being, is revealed to us though the intellec- literature, and of its partial reproduction in tual intuition, a kind of spiritual vision, the school of New-England Idealism, but which is the great organ of philosophy in the perception of truth. The self-development of the Absolute or Infinite Mind con

this we must, for the present, defer. The arrival of nature and through nature, of God, to self-consciousness in man, is an idea which

will be recognized as the pervading thought | mere negations. It is only in the "mediation of that Philosophy, in whose rhythmical of their antagonism" that real existence aputterances we are taught how

How

-"Past, Present, Future, shoot, Triple blossoms from one root."

"Substances at base divided,
In their summits are united;
Where the holy essence rolls,
One though separated souls,
And the sunny on sleeps,
Folding nature in its deeps;"

And how

"The poor grass does plot and plan

What it will do when it is man."

pears.

In the Abstract Idea of Hegel, as in the Ego of Fichte and the Absolute of Schelling, the universe potentially exists. The decomposition of this Idea gives all the complex phenomena of thought and being. This decomposition is effected through an impulse to activity contained in the Idea, and which unfolds itself in the evolution of contraries, through a logical process of development. In this logical process consists the spirit of the Idea, the true, substantial existence-the Absolute God.

Creation thus becomes synonymous with dialectics, and Hegel's Logic a formula of world-development, a programme of procedure for the Absolute Idea.

Reason had thus reached its highest possible conceptions. It had pushed its generalizations to a point of abstraction beyond which the boldest thought could never wing its solitary way. But what of the incommunicable Sphinx? Had Reason resolved her curious enigmas? Alas! she had come, bringing her children of sharpest eye and cunning brain, but no Edipus had arrived. The secret which the ages had kept, of

The Idealism of Kant had thus, in diverse directions, consummated its two-fold development. Its subjective phase had reached its highest expression in Fichte, while Schell- In his Philosophy of Nature, Hegel's speing had exhausted its objective element. culations are similar to those of Schelling. The two divergent lines were now to be He holds that nature is inarticulate thought, united in the Absolute Idealism of Hegel. on its way to consciousness; and when we Fichte, starting with the Ego as the only add his idea, that God comes to full self-conreal existence, constructed from it the non-sciousness only in Philosophy, there will be ego; Schelling, taking the Absolute as the no question of Hegel's claim to the paterlast possible generalization, traced its unfold-nity of Absolute Idealism. ing in the me and the not-me. Hegel starts with an Abstract Idea as his conception of the Absolute-and his conception is the Absolute itself, since thought and existence are correlative-and by a process of Logic resolves it into the various phenomena of the universe. This unresolved Idea is not an Absolute Unity, for such a unity is impossible. In the last generalizations of the Reason, two elements of thought are always given, which are mutually generative and conditioning. These two elements are contraries and correlatives. Every thing is bi-polar. It has its positive and negative side. "An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole." The subjective and the objective, the conditioned and the unconditioned meet in every possible conception. Neither is a reality in itself; neither can exist independent of the other. Being and Non-Being, abstractly and separately considered, are the same, for both are unconditioned, and hence exclude each other; but in their reciprocal negation, existence is posited, as two negatives combined give an affirmative. Since, then, nothing exists in itself alone, the only reality lies in the relation. Subject and object disconnected are

"What subsisteth and what seems,"

was not yet whispered. Some clearer vision
must read the mysterious cipher :

"Profounder, profounder,
Man's spirit must dive:
To his aye-rolling orbit

No goal will arrive."

Since Reason had thus exhausted its energies in vain, what remained but to invoke once more the assistance of Faith? To her piercing vision, it might be that the secrets of being would unfold their mystical life. This appeal from the discursive to the spiritual faculty, was made by one of the best and purest of Germany's gifted children. Jacobi has been called the German Plato; and in lofty spiritualism and a keenly apprehensive

intellect, he is not unworthy of a memory and mention with the founder of the Academy and the pride of Athens. His devoutly religious spirit could not accept the cold and dreary abstractions of that rationalistic philosophy which had become so prevalent. He did not believe that the Understanding was the only organ of truth, and Logic its sole interpreter. In the depth of his consciousness was implanted the conviction, that "reason is not entire in reasoning, nor is all evidence reducible to that of demonstration." He regarded Reason as something more than a discursive and regulative faculty. He recognized in it an element of feeling, a faithprinciple, which lifted it above all ratiocina-Jam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna, tive processes of thought, and carried it beyond the limitations of logic. In this synthesis of reason and faith is given an immediate and intuitive perception of truths which transcend all faculties of demonstration, but which are authenticated in the spontaneous and universal consciousness. The existence and attributes of God, the immortality of the soul, and the fundamental principles of morals, are truths without the range of Categories, Predicables, and Syllogism, and verified only in the spontaneous affirmations of the intuition.

their respective forms would be to write the annals of German thought for the last half century.

Philosophy had thus completed another great revolution on the field of modern speculation. In passing through its second ecliptic, it had reproduced its four great systems of thought, and again found in Mysticism the limits of its endeavor. And was there nothing gained, then, through so many centuries of intellectual activity? Had Philosophy but repeated its former periods, and could it hope for no higher guerdon than the honors of ancestral thought?

A full recognition of the moral attributes of Deity, and a hearty acceptance of Christian Revelation, distinguished Jacobi from most of the philosophers of his time. With him, this universe of being was something more than a reflex of consciousness or the decomposition of an abstract Idea. He recognized it as the fair creation of Infinite Goodness, rather than as the necessitated development of a primordial germ, or the product of unconscious law.

"Deep love lieth under

These pictures of time;
They fade in the light of
Their meaning sublime."

The faith-principle of Jacobi naturally led to
Mysticism, and to various species of mysti-
cism, as it was connected with the respective
systems of Idealism. Of these various
classes of mystics, differing, by the slightest
gradations of sentiment, from the philosophi-
cal faith of Schlegel to the supernatural
illuminations of Swedenborg, we have no
space to speak. Their mazy speculations are
inwrought in all the texture of German let-
ters and life; and to give a full exposition of

Delectos heroas; erunt quodque ultera bella,
Alter erit tum Tiphys, et ultera quæ vehat Argo
Atque iterum ad Troiam magnus mitteturAchilles."

Nay, not in such fruitless renewals had Philosophy exhausted the energies of Intellect, and wasted the fires of Genius. Thought is always advancing, but in a spiral line," says Goethe. Ancient systems had reäppeared, but in larger proportions and upon a higher plane. The elements might. be the same, but they had been taken up into fuller developments, and set in higher and brighter constellations of thought. The speculations of the French and English Sensationalists far surpassed, in penetration and vigor, those of Athens or Ionia. Physical Philosophy, at least, has been enriched by their searching empirical inquiries, whatever may have been the value of their contributions to metaphysical science. The Skepticism of Hume, by its acute and discriminative observation of mental phenomena, disclosed laws of our intellectual nature, of whose existence and operation Pyrrho and the Academicians were profoundly ignorant. Idealism, in its palmiest days, and as it fell from lips of more than Attic eloquence, in the groves of Academus and on the banks of the Ilissus, could not compare, in affluent and profound speculation, with its latter developments in the systems of Kant and Fichte and Schelling and Hegel. In a thorough and exhaustive analysis of psychological phenomena, and a rigid application of method and logical tests, Germany far excelled Greece. And the mysticism of Alexandria, as represented in the vision of Porphyry and the union and ecstacy of Plotinus and Proclus, was of feeble growth, in comparison with its more luxuriant development in the kindling

aurora, the lofty faith and piercing intuition | The former alternative seemed fruitless, the of Boehme, and Jacobi, and Schlegel. On- latter inglorious. But one other expedient tology had traveled, by slight gradations of remained to bring all existing systems toadvance, from the crude materialistic concep-gether, and in their combination to discover tions of Thales, to the refined and towering new principles and truths. Each system is generalizations of Hegel; and psychological true in part. The error of Philosophy has science had gradually pushed its ascending way, from the faint initial distinctions of Parmenides, to the profound analysis and complete classifications of the philosopher of Königsburg.

Not in vain, then, had Philosophy prosecuted her inquiries, through all the mazy speculations of ancient and modern thought. Not in vain, with unfaltering hope, had she sought, of sense, and reason, and faith, some response to her questionings. Not in vain; for though the riddle of the Sphinx remained unsolved, many truthful and significant words had fallen from the lips of those who had essayed to whisper her secret; many illustrious Names, "which the world will not willingly let die," had left her their legacy of imperishable thought; many pure and exalted sentiments had been given to the heart of Virtue; many fruitful and enduring principles in morals and science had been added to the treasury of Truth.

We have thus traced the course of Speculative Philosophy, from its first feeble beginnings in Greece, to the culminated development of each of its respective systems. But the great world-problem was still unresolved, save to the rapt vision of Faith alone. Such solution Philosophy could never accept, for it was beyond the application of all its recognized criteria of verification. What, then, remained to be done? Must Philosophy retrace its steps, or abandon the search?

|

been to mistake this part for the whole. Truth is always in harmony with itself, and assimilates with its like. Bring together, then, all the various systems and schools, and let their fractional truths unite. Error will thus be eliminated, and truth, complete and without alloy, remain as the happy result.

This expedient, then, is adopted. The warring systems are brought into correspondence, the ancient feud forgot, and Eclecticism, like harmony born of discords, the fifth and last great system of Philosophy, appears. Of this system, as founded and developed by the most accomplished and acute Thinker of modern time, we do not now propose to speak. Upon some future occasion we shall resume the consideration of this subject, with an exposition of the Eclectical Philosophy of Cousin, and a discussion of the relations of metaphysical to physical science.

W. L. C.

NOTE.-It may be proper to say, that the omission in the above sketch of any allusion to several important Schools is not from inadvertence, or an under-estimate of their contributions to Philosophical Science. In a full history of Speculative Philosophy, the teachings of the Porch and the Garden, and the later speculations of the Scottish School, would claim a prominent position. But regarding them as only branch-movements in the direct line of development which we have sought to trace, we have omitted their publication.

W. L. C.