Biographia Literaria

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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.

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