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. To make myself intelligible as far as my present subject requires, it will be sufficient briefly 5 to observe.-I. That all association demands and presupposes the existence of the thoughts and images to be associated.-2. 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 10 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, the inexplicable swarm and equivocal generation of motions in our own brains. 15 -3. That this hypothesis neither involves the explanation, nor precludes the necessity, of a mechanism and co-adequate forces in the percepient, 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 20 solved by the mere pre-existence of an original; the copyist of Raphael's Transfiguration must repeat more or less. perfectly the process of Raphael. 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 25 the very same difficulty. We might as rationally chant the 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 30 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 mere sophisma pigrum, and (as Bacon hath said) the arrogance of pusillanimity, which lifts up the idol of a mortal's fancy and commands us 35

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 5 self-complacent* grin have appealed to common sense, whether the sun did not move and the earth stand still.

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 neither of them an abiding place for my reason, I began to ask myself; 10 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, 15 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 contra-natural. Assume in 20 its full extent the position, nihil in intellectu quod non prius

in sensu, without Leibnitz's qualifying præter ipsum intellectum, and in the same sense, in which the position was understood by Hartley and Condillac: and what Hume had demonstratively deduced from this concession con

* "And Coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin." Pope..

cerning cause and effect, will apply with equal and crushing force to all the * other eleven categorical forms, and the logical functions corresponding to them. How can we make bricks without straw? or build without cement? We learn all things indeed by occasion of experience; but 5 the very facts so learnt force us inward on the antecedents, that must be pre-supposed in order to render experience itself possible. The first book of Locke's Essays, (if the supposed error, which it labors to subvert, be not a mere thing of straw, an absurdity which no man ever did, or 10 indeed ever could, believe,) is formed on a σópioμa éтeρo¿ŋrýσews, and involves the old mistake of Cum hoc: ergo, propter hoc.

The term, Philosophy, defines itself as an affectionate seeking after the truth; but Truth is the correlative of 15 Being. This again is no way conceivable, but by assuming as a postulate, that both are ab initio, identical and coinherent; that intelligence and being are reciprocally each other's substrate. I presumed that this was a possible conception, (i.e. that it involved no logical inconsonance,) from 20 the length of time during which the scholastic definition of the Supreme Being, as "actus purissimus sine ulla potentialitate," was received in the schools of Theology, both by the Pontifician and the Reformed divines. The early study of Plato and Plotinus, with the commentaries and the 25 THEOLOGIA PLATONICA of the illustrious Florentine; of Proclus, and Gemistius Pletho; and at a later period of the "De Immenso et Innumerabili," and the "De la causa, principio ed uno," of the philosopher of Nola, who could boast of a Sir Philip Sidney and Fulke Greville among his patrons, 30 and whom the idolaters of Rome burnt as an atheist in the

* Videlicet; quantity, quality, relation, and mode, each consisting of three subdivisions. Vide Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 95 and 106. See too the judicious remarks on Locke and Hume.

year 1660; had all contributed to prepare my mind for the reception and welcoming of the "Cogito quia sum, et sum quia Cogito "; a philosophy of seeming hardihood, but certainly the most ancient, and therefore presumptively 5 the most natural.

Why need I be afraid? Say rather how dare I be ashamed of the Teutonic theosophist, Jacob Behmen? Many indeed, and gross were his delusions; and such as furnish frequent and ample occasion for the triumph of the learned over the 10 poor ignorant shoemaker, who had dared think for himself. But while we remember that these delusions were such, as might be anticipated from his utter want of all intellectual discipline, and from his ignorance of rational psychology, let it not be forgotten that the latter defect he had in common 15 with the most learned theologians of his age. Neither with books, nor with book-learned men was he conversant. A meek and shy quietist, his intellectual powers were never stimulated into fev'rous energy by crowds of proselytes, or by the ambition of proselytizing. JACOB BEHMEN was an 20 enthusiast, in the strictest sense, as not merely distinguished, but as contra-distinguished, from a fanatic. While I in part translate the following observations from a contemporary writer of the Continent, let me be permitted to premise, that I might have transcribed the substance from memoranda of 25 my own, which were written many years before his pam

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phlet was given to the world; and that I prefer another's words to my own, partly as a tribute due to priority of publication; but still more from the pleasure of sympathy in a case where coincidence only was possible.

Whoever is acquainted with the history of philosophy, during the two or three last centuries, cannot but admit, that there appears to have existed a sort of secret and tacit compact among the learned, not to pass beyond a certain limit in speculative science. The privilege of free thought, so highly 35 extolled, has at no time been held valid in actual practice,

except within this limit; and not a single stride beyond it has ever been ventured without bringing obloquy on the transgressor. The few men of genius among the learned class, who actually did overstep this boundary, anxiously avoided the appearance of having so done. Therefore the 5 true depth of science, and the penetration to the inmost centre, from which all the lines of knowledge diverge to their ever distant circumference, was abandoned to the illiterate and the simple, whom unstilled yearning, and an original ebulliency of spirit, had urged to the investigation of 10 the indwelling and living ground of all things. These, then, because their names had never been inrolled in the guilds of the learned, were persecuted by the registered livery-men as interlopers on their rights and priviledges. All without distinction were branded as fanatics and phantasts; not 15 only those, whose wild and exorbitant imaginations had actually engendered only extravagant and grotesque phantasms, and whose productions were, for the most part, poor copies and gross caricatures of genuine inspiration; but the truly inspired likewise, the originals themselves. And 20 this for no other reason, but because they were the unlearned, men of humble and obscure occupations. When, and from whom among the literati by profession, have we ever heard the divine doxology repeated, "I thank thee, O Father! Lord of Heaven and Earth! because thou hast hid these 25 things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." No; the haughty priests of learning not only banished from the schools and marts of science all who had dared draw living waters from the fountain, but drove them out of the very temple, which mean time "the buyers, and 30 sellers, and money-changers" were suffered to make "a den of thieves."

And yet it would not be easy to discover any substantial ground for this contemptuous pride in those literati, who have most distinguished themselves by their scorn of BEHMEN, 35