flecting mind make the experiment of explaining to itself the evidence of our sensuous intuitions, from the hypothesis that in any given perception there is a something which has been communicated in it by an impact, or an impression ab extra. In the first place by the impact on the percipient, or ens representans, not the object itself, but only its action or effect will pass into the same. Not the iron tongue, but its vibrations pass into the metal of the bell. Now in our immediate perception, it is not the mere power or act of the object, but the object itself, which is immediately present. We might indeed attempt to explain this result by a chain of deductions and conclusions; but that, first, the very faculty of deducing and concluding would equally demand an explanation; and secondly, that there exists in fact no such intermediation by logical notions, such as those of cause and effect. It is the object itself, not the product of a syllogism, which is present to our consciousness. Or would we cess are equally incomprehensible; and that, for anything we can prove to the contrary, the connexion between the impression and the sensation may be both arbitrary: that it is therefore by no means impossible, that our sensations may be merely the occasions on which the correspondent perceptions are excited; and that, at any rate, the consideration of these sensations, which are attributes of mind, can throw no light on the manner in which we acquire our knowledge of the existence and qualities of body. From this view of the subject it follows, that it is external objects themselves, and not any species or images of these objects, that the mind perceives; and that, although, by the constitution of our nature, certain sensations are rendered the constant antecedents of our perceptions, yet it is just as difficult to explain how our perceptions are obtained by their means, as it would be, upon the supposition, that the mind were all at once inspired with them, without any concomitant sensations whatever." Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, pp. 69–70.

Such statements, in the view of the Transcendentalist, involve a contradiction, namely, that the soul can penetrate, by perception, into that which is without itself; or that the human soul, by divine power, has present to it, or takes in essential properties not of mind, but of something alien from mind and directly contrary to it; which is impossible. The exploded hypothesis of species and images was an attempt to do away the contradiction; the doctrine found wanting by Schelling shows the futility of that attempt; but in assuming the real outness or separateness of the objects of perception,-that they are, as things in themselves, apart from and extrinsic to our mind, appears to set up the contradiction again, or at least to keep it up. S. C.]

explain this supervention of the object to the sensation, by a productive faculty set in motion by an impulse; still the transition into the percipient, of the object itself, from which the impulse proceeded, assumes a power that can permeate and wholly possess the soul,

And like a God by spiritual art

Be all in all, and all in every part.9

And how came the percipient here? And what is become of the wonder-promising Matter, that was to perform all these marvels by force of mere figure, weight, and motion? The most consistent proceeding of the dogmatic materialist is to fall back into the common rank of soul-and-bodyists; to affect the myste rious, and declare the whole process a revelation given, and not to be understood, which it would be profane to examine too closely. Datur, non intelligitur. But a revelation unconfirmed by miracles, and a faith not commanded by the conscience, a philosopher may venture to pass by, without suspecting himself of any irreligious tendency.

Thus, as materialism has been generally taught, it is utterly unintelligible, and owes all its proselytes to the propensity so common among men, to mistake distinct images for clear conceptions; and vice versa, to reject as inconceivable whatever from its own nature is unimaginable. But as soon as it becomes intelligible, it ceases to be materialism. In order to explain thinking, as a material phenomenon, it is necessary to refine matter into a mere modification of intelligence, with the two-fold function of appearing and perceiving. Even so did Priestley in his controversy with Price. He stripped matter of all its material properties; substituted spiritual powers; and when we expected to find a body, behold! we had nothing but its ghost-the apparition of a defunct substance!

I shall not dilate further on this subject; because it will (if God grant health and permission) be treated of at large and systematically in a work, which I have many years been preparing, on the Productive Logos human and divine; with, and as the introduction to, a full commentary on the Gospel of St. John.

9 [Altered from Cowley's All over Love. II. Ed.]

To make myself intelligible as far as my present subject requires, it will be sufficient briefly to observe-1. That all association demands and presupposes the existence of the thoughts and images to be associated.-2. That the hypothesis of an external world exactly correspondent to those images or modifications of our own being, which alone, according to this system, we actually behold, is as thorough idealism as Berkeley's, inasmuch as it equally, perhaps in a more perfect degree, removes all reality and immediateness of perception, and places us in a dream-world of phantoms and spectres, 10 the inexplicable swarm and equivocal generation of motions in our own brains.-3. That this hypothesis neither involves the explanation, nor precludes the necessity, of a mechanism and co-adequate forces in the percipient, which at the more than magic touch of the impulse from without is to create anew for itself the correspondent object. The formation of a copy is not solved by the mere pre-existence of an original; the copyist of Raffael's Transfiguration must repeat more or less perfectly the process of Raffael. It would be easy to explain a thought from the image on the retina, and that from the geometry of light, if this very light did not present the very same difficulty." We might as rationally chant the

10 [See Abhandlungen, Phil. Schrift., p. 217. "The Idealist in this sense is left lonely and forsaken in the midst of the world, surrounded on all sides by spectres. For him there is nothing immediate, and Intuition itself, in which spirit and object meet, is to him but a dead thought." Transl. S. C.]

[The reasoning here appears to be the same as in the Ideen. Introd., pp. 22-3. Schelling says-" You curiously inquire how the light, radiated back from bodies, works on your optic nerves; also how the image inverted on the retina, appears in your soul not inverted but straight. But again, what is that in you which itself sees this image on the retina, and inquires how it can have come into the soul? Evidently something which so far is wholly independent of the outward impression, and to which, however, this impression is not unknown. How then came the impression to this region of your soul, in which you feel yourself entirely free and independent of impressions? If you interpose between the affection of your nerves, your brain and so forth, and the representation of an outward thing ever so many intervening links, you do but cheat yourself for the passage over from body to soul cannot, according to your peculiar representations" (mode of perceiving), "take place continuously, bu only through a leap,-which yet you propose to

Brahmin creed of the tortoise that supported the bear, that supported the elephant, that supported the world, to the tune of "This is the house that Jack built." The sic Deo placitum est we all admit as the sufficient cause, and the divine goodness as the sufficient reason; but an answer to the Whence and Why is no answer to the How, which alone is the physiologist's concern. It is a sophisma pigrum, and (as Bacon hath said) the arrogance of pusillanimity, which lifts up the idol of a mortal's fancy and commands us to fall down and worship it, as a work of divine wisdom, an ancile or palladium fallen from heaven. By the very same argument the supporters of the Ptolemaic system might have rebuffed the Newtonian, and pointing to the sky with selfcomplacent grin12 have appealed to common sense, whether the sun did not move and the earth stand still.

1

CHAPTER IX.

Is Philosophy possible as a science, and what are its conditions?-Giordano Bruno-Literary Aristocracy, or the existence of a tacit compact among the learned as a privileged order-The Author's obligations to the Mystics to Immanuel Kant-The difference between the letter and the spirit of Kant's writings, and a vindication of prudence in the teaching of Philosophy-Fichte's attempt to complete the Critical system--Its partial success and ultimate failure-Obligations to Schelling; and among English writers to Saumarez.

AFTER I had successively studied in the schools of Locke, Berkeley, Leibnitz, and Hartley, and could find in none of them an abiding place for my reason, I began to ask myself; is a system of philosophy, as different from mere history and historic classification, possible? If possible, what are its necessary conditions? I was for a while disposed to answer the first question in the negative, and to admit that the sole practicable employment for the human mind was to observe, to collect, and to classify. But I soon felt, that human nature itself fought up against this wilful resignation of intellect; and as soon did I find, that the scheme, taken with all its consequences and cleared of all inconsistencies, was not less impracticable than contranatural. Assume in its full extent the position, nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu, assume it without Leibnitz's qualifying præter ipsum intellectum,' and in the same sense, in which the position was understood by Hartley and Condillac: and then what Hume

["On m'opposera cet axiome, reçû parmi les Philosophes: que rien n'est dans l'âme qui ne vienne des sens. Mais il faut excepter l'âme même et ses affections. Nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu, excipe: nisi ipse intellectus. Or l'âme renferme l'être, la substance, l'un, le même, la cause, la perception, le raisonnement, et quantité d'autres notions que les sens ne sauroient donner. Cela s'accorde assez avec votre Auteur de l'essai, qui cherche une bonne partie des Idées dans la réflexion de l'esprit sur sa propre nature." Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain, liv. ii, c. 1, Erdmann, p. 223. Leibnitz refutes Locke, as com