not the phantom of a table, from which he may argumentatively reduce the reality of a table, which he does not see. If to destroy the reality of that we actually behold, be idealism, what can be more egregriously 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 that 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 as soon to be published, 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 VAPPAN 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.

moving without the least deviation in one straight line. It would be naturally taken for granted that there was a guide at the head of the file: what if it were answered-No! sir, the men are without number, and infinite blindness supplies the place of sight?

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

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

THESIS IV. That there can be but one such

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

SCHOLIUM. If we affirm of a board that it is blue,

the predicate (blue) is accidental, and not implied in the subject, board. If we affirm of a circle, that it is equi-radical, the predicate, indeed, is implied in the definition of the subject; but the existence of the subject itself is contingent, and supposes both a cause and a percipient. The same reasoning will apply to the indefinite number of supposed indernonstrable truths, exempted from the profane approach of phi

other less eloquent and not more profound inaugurators of common sense, on the throne of philosophy; a fruitless attempt, were it only that it is the two-fold function of philosophy to reconcile reason with common sense, and to elevate common sense into reason.

THESIS V. Such a principle cannot be any THING or OBJECT. Each thing is what it is in consequence of some other thing. An infinite, independent thing,* is no less a contradiction, than an infinite circle, or a

*The impossibility of an absolute thing, (substantia unica,) as neither genus, spedes, nor individuum, as well as its utter

unfitness for the fundamental position of a philosophic system, will be demonstrated in he critique on Spinozism in the fifth treatise of my Logosophia.

sideless triangle. Besides, a thing is that which is capable of being an object, of which itself is not the sole percipient. But an object is inconceivable without a subject as its antithesis. Omne perceptum percipientem supponit.

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

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

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

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

*It is most worthy of notice, that in the first revelation of himself, not confined to individuals; indeed, in the very first revelation of his absolute being, Jehovah at the same time

THESIS VII-If then I know myself only through myself, it is contradictory to require any other predicate of self, but that of self-consciousness. Only in the selfconsciousness of a spirit is there the required identity of object and of representation; for herein consists the essence of a spirit, that it is self-representative. If, therefore, this be the one only immediate truth, in the certainty of which the reality of our collective knowledge is grounded, it must follow that the spirit, in all the objects which it views, views only itself. If this could be proved, the immediate reality of all intuitive knowledge would be assured. It has been shown, that a spirit is that which is its own object, yet not origioally an object, but an absolute subject for which all, itself included, may become an object. It must, there. fore, be an ACT; for every object is, as an object, dead, fixed, incapable in itself of an action, and necessarily finite. Again: the spirit, (originally the identity of object and subject,) must, in some sense, dissolve this identity, in order to be conscious of it: fit alter et idem. But this implies an act, and it follows, therefore, that intelligence or self-consciousness is impossible, except by and in a will. The self-conscious spirit, therefore, is a will; and freedom must be assumed as a ground of philosophy, and can never be deduced from it.

THESIS VIII.-Whatever in its origin is objective, is likewise, as such, necessarily infinite. Therefore, since the spirit is not originally an object, and as the subject exists in antithesis to an object, the spirit cannot originally be finite. But neither can it be a subject without becoming an object, and as it is originally the identity of both, it can be conceived neither ginal union of both. In the existence, in the reconas infinite or finite, exclusively, but as the most ori. ciling, and the recurrence of this contradiction, consists the process and mystery of production and life.

might be equally affirmed of himself by any existent being. The Cartesian Cogito, ergo sum, is objectionable, because either the Cogito is used extra Gradum, and then it is involved in the sum and is tautological, or it is taken as a particular mode or dignity, and then it is subordinated to the sum as the species to the genus; or, rather, as a particular modification to the subject modified; and not pre-ordinated, as the arguments seem to require. For Cogito is Sum Cogitans. This is clear by the inevidence of the converse. Cogitat ergo est, is true, because it is a mere application of the logical rule: Quicquid in genere est, est et in specie. Est (cogitans) ergo est. It is a cherry tree; therefore it is a tree. But, est ergo cogitat, is illogical: for quod est in specie, non necessario in genere est. It may be true. I hold it to be true, that quic

principle of knowing, as at once the source and the

quid vere est, est per veram sui affirmationem; but it is a derivative, not an immediate truth. Here, then, we have, by anticipation, the distinction between the conditional finite I, (which, as known in distinct consciousness by occasion of experience, is called, by Kant's followers, the empirical I) and the absolute I am, and likewise the dependence, or rather the inherence of the former in the latter; in whom "we live, and move, and have our being," as St. Paul divinely asserts, differing widely from the Theists of the mechanic school, (as Sir J. Newton, Locke, &c.) who must say from whom we had our being, and with it, life and the powers o. life,

THESIS X.-The transcendental philosopher does not inquire, what ultimate ground of our knowledge there may lie out of our knowing, but what is the last in our knowing itself, beyond which we cannot pass. The principle of our knowing is sought within the sphere of our knowing. It must be something, therefore, which can itself be known. It is asserted, only, that the act of self-consciousness is for us the source and principle of all our possible knowledge. Whether, abstracted from us, there exists any thing higher and beyond this primary self-knowing, which is for us the form of all our knowing, must be decided by the result.

That the self-consciousness is the fixt point, to which for us all is morticed and annexed, needs no further proof. But that the self-consciousness may be the modification of a higher form of being, perhaps of a higher consciousness, and this again of a yet higher, and so on in an infinite regressus; in short, that self-consciousness may be itself something explicable into something, which must lie beyond the possibility of our knowledge, because the whole synthesis of our intelligence is first formed in and through the self-consciousness, does not at all concern us as transcendental philosophers. For to us the self-consciousness is not a kind of being, but a kind of knowing, and that, too, the highest and farthest that exists for us. It may however be shown, and has in part already been shown, in a preceding page, that even when the objective is assumed as the first, we yet can never pass beyond the principle of self-consciousness. Should we attempt it, we must be driven back from ground to ground, each of which would cease to be ground the moment we pressed on it. We must be whirled down the gulf of an infinite series. But this would make our reason baffle the end and purpose of all reason, namely, unity and system. Or we must break off the system arbitrarily, and affirm an absolute something that is in and of itself at once cause and effect, (causa sui,) subject and object, or, rather. the absolute identity of both. But as this is inconceivable, except in a self-consciousness, it follows, that even as natural philosophers we must arrive at the same principle from which, as transcendental philosophers, we set out; that is, in a self-consciousness in which the principium essendi does not stand to the principium cognoscendi in the relation of cause to ef

Μάκαρ, λαθί μοι! Πάτερ, λαθί μοι Εἰ παρά κόσμον, Εἰ παρὰ μοιραν

Τῶν τῶν ἔθιγον!

Bearing then this in mind, that intelligence is a self-development, not a quality supervening to a substance, we may abstract from all degree, and for the purpose of philosophic construction, reduce it to kind, under the idea of an indestructible power, with two opposite and counteracting forces, which by a metaphor borrowed from astronomy, we may call the centrifugal and centripedal forces. The intelligence in the one tends to objectize itself, and in the other to know itself in the object. It will be hereafter my business to construct, by a series of intuitions, the progressive schemes that must follow from such a power with such forces, till I arrive at the fulness of the human intelligence. For my present purpose, I assume such a power as my principle, in order to deduce from it a faculty, the generation, agency, and application of which form the contents of the ensuing chapter.

In a preceding page I have justified the use of technical terms in philosophy, whenever they tend to preclude confusion of thought, and when they assist the memory by the exclusive singleness of their meaning more than they may, for a short time, bewilder the attention by their strangeness. I trust, that I have not extended this privilege beyond the grounds on which I have claimed it; namely, the conveniency of the scholastic phrase to distinguish the kind from all degrees, or rather to express the kind with the abstraction of degree, as, for instance, multeity instead of multitude; or, secondly, for the sake of correspondence in sound and interdependent or antithetical terms, as subject and object; or, lastly, to avoid the wearying recurrence of circumlocu tions and definitions. Thus I shall venture to use potence, in order to express a specific degree of power, in imitation of the algebraists. I have even hazarded the new verb potenziate, with its derivatives, in order to express the combination or transfer of powers. It is with new or unusual terms, as with privileges in courts of justice or legislature; there can be no legitimate privilege, where there already

exists a positive law adequate to the purpose; and when there is no law in existence, the privilege is to be justified by its accordance with the end, or final cause of all law. Unusual and new-coined words are doubtless an evil; but vagueness, confusion, and imperfect conveyance of our thoughts, are a far greater. Every system, which is under the necessity of using terms not familiarized by the metaphysics in fashion, will be described as written in an unintelligible style, and the author must expect the charge of having substituted learned jargon for clear conception; while, according to the creed of our modern philosophers, nothing is deemed a clear conception, but what is representable by a distinct image. Thus the conceivable is reduced within the bounds of the picturable. Hinc patet, qui fiat ut, cum irrepræsentable et impossibile vulgo ejusdem significatus habeantur, conceptus tam Continui, quam infiniti, a plurimis rejeciantur, quippe quorum, secundum leges cognitionis intuitiva, repræsentatio est impossibilis. Quanquam autem harum e non paucis scholis explosarum notionem, præsertim prioris, causam hic non gero, maximi tamen momenti erit monuisse: gravissimo illos errore labi, qui tam perversa argumentandi ratione utuntur. Quicquid enim repugnat legibus intellectus et rationis, utique est impossibile; quod autem, cum rationis puræ sit objectum, legibus cognitionis intuitivæ tantummodo non subest, non item. Nam hinc dissensus inter facultatem sensitivam ét intellectualem, (quarem indolem mox exponam) nihil indigitat, nisi, quas mens ab intelleciu accerptas fert ideas abstractas, illas in concreto exequi, et in Intuitus commutare sæpenumero non posse. Hæc autem reluctantia subjectiva mentitur, ut plurimum, repugnantiam aliquam objectivam, et incautos facile fallit, limitibus, quibus mens humana circuscribitur, pro iis habitis, quibus ipsa rerum essentia continetur.*- Kant de

*Translation.-" Hence it is clear, from what cause many reject the notion of the continuous and the infinite. They take, namely, the words irrepresentable and impossible, in one and the same meaning; and, according to the forms of sensuous evidence, the notion of the continuous and the infinite is doubtless impossible. I am not now pleading the

cause of these laws, which not a few schools have thought proper to explode, especially the former (the law of continuity.) But it is of the highest importance to admonish the reader, that those who adopt so perverted a mode of reasoning, are under a grievous error. Whatever opposes the formal principles of the understanding and the reason, is confessedly impossible; but not, therefore, that which is therefore is exclusively an object of pure intellect. For this non-coincidence of the sensuous and the intellectual, (the nature of which I shall presently lay open,) proves nothing more but that the mind cannot always adequately represent in the conerete, and transform into distinct images, abstract notions derived from the pure intellect. But this contradiction, which is in itself merely subjective, (i. e. an incapacity in the nature of man,) too often passes for an incongruity or impossibility in the object, (i. e. the notions themselves,) and seduce the

not amenable to the forms of sensuous evidence, because it

incautious to mistake the limitations of the human faculties for the limits of things, as they really exist."

I take this occasion to observe, that here and elsewhere, Kant uses the terms intuition, and the verb active intueri, (Germanice anschauen) for which we have unfortunately no correspondent word, exclusively for that which can be represented in space and time. He therefore consistently, and rightly, denies the possibility of intellectual intuitions. But

Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis forma et princi piis, 1770.

Critics, who are most ready to bring this charge of pedantry and unintelligibility, are the most apt to overlook the important fact, that beside the language of words, there is a language of spirits, (sermo interior,) and that the former is only the vehicle of the latter. Consequently, their assurance, that they do not understand the philosophic writer, instead of proving any thing against the philosophy, may furnish an equal and (cæteris paribus) even a stronger presumption against their own philosophic talent.

Great indeed are the obstacles which an English metaphysician has to encounter. Amongst his most respectable and intelligent judges, there will be many who have devoted their attention exclusively to the concerns and interests of human life, and who bring with them to the perusal of a philosophic system an habitual aversion to all speculations, the utility and application of which are not evident and immediate. To these I would, in the first instance, merely oppose an authority which they themselves hold venerable, that of Lord Bacon: non inutile scientiæ existimande sunt, quarum in se nullus est usus, si ingenia acuant et ordinent.

There are others, whose prejudices are still more formidable, inasmuch as they are grounded in their moral feelings and religious principles, which had been alarmed and shocked by the impious and pernicious tenets defended by Hume, Priestley, and the French fatalists or necessitarians; some of whom had perverted metaphysical reasonings to the denial of the mysteries, and, indeed, of all the peculiar doctrines of Christianity; and others even to the subversion of all distinction between right and wrong. I would request such men to consider what an eminent and successful defender of the Christian faith has observed, that true metaphysics are nothing else but true divinity, and that in fact the writers who have given them such just offence, were sophists, who had taken advantage of the general neglect into which the science of logic has unhappily fallen, rather than metaphysicians, a name, indeed, which those writers were the first to explode as unmeaning. Secondly, I would remind them, that as long as there are men in the world to whom the Trudi séavrov is an instinct and a command from their own nature, so long will there be metaphysicians and metaphysical speculations; that false metaphysie can be effectually counteracted by true metaphysics alone; and that if the reasoning be clear, solid, and pertinent, the truth deduced can never be the less valuable on account of the depth from which it may have been drawn.

A third class profess themselves friendly to metaphysics, and believe that they are themselves metaphysicians. They have no objection to system or terminology, provided it be the method and the nomenclature to which they have been familiarized in

as I see no adequate reason for this exclusive sense of the term, I have reverted to its wider signification authorized by our elder theologians and metaphysicians, according to whom the term comprehends all truths known to us without medium.

the writings of Locke, Hume, Hartley, Condillac, or perhaps Dr. Reid and Professor Stewart. To objections from this cause, it is a sufficient answer, that one main object of my attempt was to demonstrate the vagueness or insufficiency of the terms used in the metaphysical schools of France and Great Britain since the revolution, and that the errors which I propose to attack cannot subsist, except as they are concealed behind the mask of a plausible and indefinite nomenclature.

But the worst and widest impediment still remains. It is the predominance of a popular philosophy, at once the counterfeit and the mortal enemy of all true and manly metaphysical research. It is that corruption, introduced by certain immethodical aphorisming Eclectics, who, dismissing, not only all system, but all logical connexion, pick and choose whatever is most plausible and showy; who select whatever words can have some semblance of sense attached to them without the least expenditure of thought; in short, whatever may enable them to talk of what they do not understand, with a careful avoidance of every thing that might awaken them to a moment's suspicion of their ignorance. This, alas! is an irremediable disease, for it brings with it, not so much an indisposition to any particular system, but an utter loss of taste and faculty for all system and for all philosophy. Like echoes, that beget each other amongst the mountains, the praise or blame of such men rolls in volleys long after the report from the original blunderbuss. Sequacitas est potius et coitio quam consensus: et tamen (quod pessimum est) pusillanimitas ista non sine arrogantia et fastidio si offert. Novum Organum.

I shall now proceed to the nature and genesis of the imagination; but I must first take leave to notice, that after a more accurate perusal of Mr. Wordsworth's remarks on the imagination, in his preface to the new edition of his poems, I find that my conclusions are not so consentient with his, as, I confess, I had taken for granted. In an article contributed by me to Mr. Southey's Omniana, on the soul and its organs of sense, are the following sentences: "These (the human faculties) I would arrange under the different senses and powers; as the eye, the ear, the touch, &c.; the imitative power, voluntary and automatic; the imagination, or shaping and modifying power; the fancy, or the aggregative and associative power; the understanding, or the regulative, substantiating and realizing power; the speculative reason-vis theoretica et scientifica, or the power by which we produce, or aim to produce, unity, necessity, and universality in all our knowledge, by means of principles a priori;* the will, or practical reason;

* This phrase, a priori, is in common most grossly misunderstood, and an absurdity burthened on it, which it does not deserve! By knowledge, a priori, we do not mean that we can know any thing previously to experience, which would be a contradiction in terms; but, that having once known it by occasion of experience, (i. e. something acting upon us from without,) we then know, that it must have pre-existed, or the experience itself would have been impossible. By experience only, I know that I have eyes; but, then my reason convinces me, that I must have had eyes in order to the experience.

the faculty of choice (Germanice, Willkuhr) and (distinct both from the moral will and the choice) the sensation of volition, which I have found reason to include under the head of single and double touch." To this, as far as it relates to the subject in question, namely, the words (the aggregative and associative power) Mr. Wordsworth's "only objection is, that the definition is too general. To aggregate and associate, to evoke and combine, belongs as well to the imagination as the fancy." I reply, that if by the power of evoking and combining, Mr. W. means the same as, and no more than, I meant by the aggregative and associative, I continue to deny, that it belongs at all to the imagination; and I am disposed to conjecture, that he has mistaken the co-presence of fancy with imagination for the operation of the latter singly. A man may work with two very dif ferent tools at the same moment; each has its share in the work, but the work effected by each is distinct and different. But it will probably appear in the next chapter, that deeming it necessary to go back much further than Mr. Wordsworth's subject required or permitted, I have attached a meaning to both fancy and imagination, which he had not in view, at least while he was writing that preface. He will judge. Would to heaven, I might meet with many such readers. I will conclude with the words of Bishop Jeremy Taylor: he to whom all things are one, who draweth all things to one, and seeth all things in one, may enjoy true peace and rest of spirit. (J. Taylor's VIA PACIS.)

CHAPTER XIII.

On the imagination, or esemplastic power. O Adam! one Almighty is, from whom All things proceed, and up to him return, If not depraved from good: created all Such to perfection, one first nature all Indued with various forms, various degrees Of substance, and in things that live, of life; But more refined, more spirituous and pure, As nearer to him placed or nearer tending, Each in their several active spheres assign'd, Till body up to spirit work, in bounds Proportion'd to each kind. So from the root Springs lighter the green stalk: from thence the leaves More airy: last, the bright consummate flower Spirits odorous breathes. Flowers and their fruit, Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublimed, To vital spirits aspire to animal: To intellectual!--give both life and sense, Fancy and understanding: whence the soul Reason receives. And reason is her being, Discursive or intuitive.

Par. Lost, b. v.

"Sane si res corporales nil nisi materiale continerent, verissime dicerentur in fluxu consistere neque habere substantiale quicquam, quemadmodum et Platonici olim recte agnovere.Hinc igitur, præter pure mathematica et phantasiæ subjecta, collegi quædam metaphysica solaque mente perceptibilia, esse admittenda : et massa materiali principium quoddam superius et, ut sic dicam, formale addendum: quandoquidem omnes veritates rerum corporearum ex solis axiomatibus logisticis et geometricis, nempe de magno et parvo, toto et parte, figura et situ, colligi non possint; sed alia de causa et effectu, actione