REESE LIBRARY u,-n_n_n, .UNIVERSITY ,F CALIFORNIA; l^eceiveci , IQO . -V<<. . 85408 Class ^, WORKS BY DR. J. HUTCHISON STIRLING. PUBLISHED BY MESSRS. T. T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. In post 8vo, price 9s., PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. The First Edinburgh University Gifford Lectures. "This volume will make for itself many friends. There is a bracing, stimulating masterfulness about the lectures, which, on a careful perusal of them, will be found to lead to many rich veins of thought." Principal STEWART, in The Critical Review. "Dr. Stirling has done splendid service, both in the history of Philosophy and Theology, and to these great sciences themselves." Professor J. IVERACH, D.D., in The British Weekly. "No more suggestive work on the mutual relations of Theology and Philosophy has ever appeared in our country." The Expository Times. In post 8vo, price 10s. 6d., DARWINIANISM: Workmen and Work. ' ' Undoubtedly the most trenchant criticism of Darwinianism that has yet appeared. . . . The book is a work of art." Professor M'KENDRICK, in The Critical Review. "To say that these chapters abound in acute reasoning, telling examples, sharp criticisms, and brilliant flashes of wit, is only to give a very modest impression of their argumentative power. ... Dr. Stirling has produced an amazingly clever book." Scotsman. Just published, in post 8vo, price 10s. 6^., WHAT /S THOUGHT? or, The Problem of Philosophy by Way of a General Conclusion so Far. EDINBURGH : T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET. WHAT IS THOUGHT ? WHAT IS THOUGHT? OR THE PROBLEM OF PHILOSOPHY BY WAY OF A GENERAL CONCLUSION SO FAR BY JAMES HUTCHISON STIRLING LL.D. EDIX. Foreign Member of the Philosophical Society of Berlin First-Appointed Gi/onl Lecturer (Edinburgh University, 1888-90) EDINBURGH T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET 1900 SB PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, FOR T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. LONDON : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED. NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. TORONTO : FLEMING H. REVKLL COMPANY. [All Eights reserved.] PREFATORY NOTE THERE really was intended a not inconsiderable preface in this place, preliminarily introductive of the work as though it were thought to involve, perhaps, something of a Orise I But casting one's eyes on the book itself, one seems to think that it is unnecessary. 85408 CONTENTS CHAPTER I 1. Introductory .... PAO ? 2. Difference and Identity ... 3. The Question of a Substantial First 4. God as such First ...''.'. 7 5. Aristotle here . 6. NOUS ....:::; * 7. The Question Remains . y CHAPTER II 1. The Ontological Proof Schelling Descartes 2. Leibnitz .... ^ 3. The Argument ' 4. Leibnitz Again . 5. The "N.B. If". ' 6. Schelling himself here 22 7. Schelling's own Argument ..... 26 CHAPTER III 1. The Problem of a First 2. The Ratio .....' 3. The Ratio continued . \ \ 4. The Ratio continued ...'.'] 40 5. Self-Consciousness 43 CHAPTER IV SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS the Ego CHAPTER V 1. Philosophy and Science . 2. The "Voice" ' Vii -52 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER VI PAGK FURTHER ILLUSTRATION] 55 CHAPTER VII THE QUANTIFICATION OF THE PREDICATE 65 CHAPTER VIII THE QUESTION RECURS 78 CHAPTER IX THE REFERENCE TO HISTORY * . .87 CHAPTER X THE GERMAN REFERENCE Kant 109 1. Hume and Causality 109 2. Kant's Theory of Perception . . . . .110 3. Schemata Ill 4. Certain Schemata Fail 112 5. An Insufficient Remedy the Rules . . . . .114 6. Kant's Causality a mere Fiasco 116 7. Closer Explanations Sense ...... 117 8. Categories Construction and Connection .... 119 9. The Second Analogy Categories . . . . .121 10. Reference to the Prolegomena 125 11. A Category not required . . . . . . .129 12. Categories in Two Classes 133 13. A most Critical Point Doubles in Sense . . . .138 14. Kant on Hume ......... 142 15. The Categories Again ....... 144 16. Hume Speaks 149 17. The Critical Point Again 150 18. Analogy 152 19. Conclusion so far Kant and Hume ..... 156 20. Philosophy Strange at Times 160 21. Time and Space 165 22. The Categories Again 166 23. Causality at Last 172 24. Relations of Ideas and Matters of Fact Necessity . . 188 25. Kant's Theory Again The Mill 200 26. Noack on the Ego 203 CONTENTS ix CHAPTER XI PAGE FlCHTE 215 CHAPTER XII SCHELLING 221 1. Schelling's First Literature 221 2. The Two Fichtian Essays 227 3. Noack on the Ego of Fichte and Schelling .... 235 4. Kant according to Noack here ...... 239 THE LECTURE (THE QUARREL OF SCHELLING AND HEGEL) . . 246 CHAPTER XIII SCHELLING continued ......... 264 1. The General Course 264 2. The Mythology 268 3. Revelation 274 4. The Positive Philosophy 277 5. The Negative Philosophy 286 6. The Bearing on Hegel 288 7. Schelling in Conclusion 307 CHAPTER XIV HEGEL 327 CHAPTER XV CONCLUSION 416 WHAT IS THOUGHT? CHAPTER I 1. INTRODUCTORY OF histories of philosophy there are so many nowadays " they grow like mushrooms from the ground " that a general idea of what philosophy is may be assumed as - even ecumenically current ; with warrant of the further assumption, therefore, that it is to thinking or thought ' that philosophy as a whole is conceived to be due. We see this to be illustratively so at least among those who, in so many words, directly claim, as regards philosophy in these days, " to be the keepers of the sacred fire, even as it was given to the Eumolpidae at Athens to care for the Eleusinian Mysteries, or to the island dwellers on Samothrace to preserve for the gods a higher worship " among the Germans, namely, Deriken is the word that, specially in the reference, is alone determinative. Denken, and again Denken, and ever and continually Denken, that to them is the name for the organ as organ, for the organ proper of philosophy. Further than Denken it is impossible to go. Denken is the whole ; and with Denken all has been completed and concluded, and the last word said. 2 WHAT IS THOUGHT? But what is Denken ? What is it to think ? What is thought ? That here evidently is what is alone at stake. For, if philosophy is a product of thought, whatever it is, whatever thought is, that, too, no less, will be specially characteristic of philosophy as philosophy. Let it be thought, Denken, that realises philosophy, then philosophy must be of thought, of Denken. Now, no doubt it occurs to all of us that we know at once, and very well already, what it is to think, what thought is, what thinking is. To think ! why is it not just to consider, to reflect, to deliberate, to follow some subject, or the question of some subject, in a series of ideas ? But, in that point of view according to the subject, namely to think may be understood somewhat to vary in its nature. In the case of numerical quantities, as subject, for example, to think is only as the word is to count. In a general sense, as we would take it, however, and apart any or every particular application, may it not be always said of us when we think that we are then in the exercise of a psychological function, just as when we assimilate we are understood to be then in the exercise of a physiological function ? To assimilate, as we know, is to convert some alien object into the body itself say into blood as blood. That is how it is with the physiological function ; but is it similarly so also with the psychological function ? To think, then, is it to convert some alien object into the mind itself say into the very blood of the mind, thought ? Let us take a case let us think the three angles of every triangle to be equal to two right angles. What is it we do then ? The " three " angles are not the " two " angles. The separates cannot be directly united the differents cannot be directly identified. That seems at once an impasse. One pen is not another pen ; INTRODUCTORY 3 nor is one ink-bottle another ink-bottle. We look around for help. If this union of separates with separates, this identification of differents with differents, is to be at all effected, since it cannot be directly effected, can it, then, possibly, we are naturally led to ask, be indirectly effected ? Even this indirectly we cannot but feel at the first glance, as no more than a reference, or a suggestion, hopeless. What is that but the impossible itself to abolish contradiction in terms, cancel the steepest contrariety, unite the trenchantly sundered, identify the personally different ! The ordinary ex- pedient and resource, mechanically to unite, mechanically to identify, is without a hint in it to succour us here ; for even a bridge such at least as the very state of the case self -evidently demands seems impracticable. Why, for a bridge, it would require to be itself the most extraordinary of hermaphrodites, at once this and at once that, one thing and another. If it is pretty evident that what we want can be only mechanically only bridge-wise accomplished for us by the means and mediation of some third something, it is not so easy to see where such a commodity is to be laid hands on. A middle that is at once either extreme is alone the necessity to suit, and by the very terms it seems alone an impossibility to find. Let the one separate and the one different be A, and let the other be B, then, evidently, a C that is at once A and at once B, is alone the medium in which both A and B can collapse to unity, can collapse to identity. That, of course, is really what takes place, for the attainment of the solution in the case of the geometrical problem under regard, a certain complementary outer angle being fallen upon as the tertium quid, the medium required. That the square on the hypotenuse of the right-angled triangle is equal to the squares on the two 4 WHAT IS THOUGHT? sides of it, affords similar illustration. The two squares are not the third square ; they are quite apart from it, and different ; and yet the truth of the case lies in their union, lies in their identification, parallelograms so and so situated, being the medium, the tertium quid, that respectively serves. And so it is that we have an example of what is meant by the word Vermittlung (mediation). In either of the two cases named the result is due to a process of Vermittlung : in both of them we see that what comes out is a Vermitteltes ; it has been vermittelt, mediated or re-mediated, realised, produced, brought about by a Drittes, a tertium quid, a third something. Are we to understand, then, that that is the way in which DenJcen, thinking, converts an alien object into the mind itself, or, as we said, into, so to speak, the blood of the mind, thought ? In all cases of such conversion, there must be Vermittlung, mediation, be -mediation, re -mediation, a process of realisation through interposition of what in Latin is a tertium quid, a medium. It may be objected here that angles, triangles, squares, and all other things the like, are not the mind, and that it is difficult to see how they can be converted into the mind, or the so-called blood of the mind either. Never- theless, if we refer to what we understand by truth if we refer to the element of truth, we may, through its mediation attain to conviction. The mind is the seat and the sense of truth, as truth itself is thought. Now, in these angles, squares, etc., it is certain relations that are alone in question, and alone the truth ; and it is they as truth that are to be regarded as united to the mind, and as identified with thought. Not but that, in this reference, we may, by and by, be brought to a closer point of view. DIFFERENCE AND IDENTITY 5 2. DIFFERENCE AND IDENTITY Meantime this, too, is pressed upon us, what so far concerns the relations of identity and difference. As we know, there is a whole party of logicians who express themselves with absolute ferocity against brethren of their own, who, as in relation to the so-called principium contradictions, and that is the contradictio oppositorum, presume to lay stress as well on the contrasting prin- ciple or proposition of the coincidentia oppositorum. In the Annotations to the Schwegler I have said (p. 366) in reference to the horror of any talk of " identity and difference in the same breath," that " it requires simply consideration to see that to explain is not to say identity is identity, but difference is identity." And we have just seen in these angles, and triangles, and squares, and oblongs, an illustration of the truth of this. The three angles were not the two angles and the two squares were not the one square, of which there was respectively question, and yet the whole matter that was in hand was the explanation of the respective differences as but respective identities, and that, too, by the mediation or intermediation of a third something which was refer- entially at once both at once both difference and identity. Nay, if we take the two self-identical things, that are yet different the one from the other apart, and look at them separately so, is not the third something, as compared with them, the interesting something, the important something ? It mediates explanation : it has movement in it, it has reason in it, while they in them- selves are immobile and reasonless. And yet this third something, as the link between, and so including in itself both identity and difference, is so far contradiction. So far, then, is not contradiction, as compared with identity, the deeper, and, as it were, the more living element ? How 6 WHAT IS THOUGHT? this is -how contradiction is life, and the movement of life, we shall eventually see, indeed. 3. THE QUESTION OF A SUBSTANTIAL FIRST It is no alien consideration here, but one very naturally in place, that it is not the things themselves in their indi- vidual entity it is not the matter, the substratum of them, that is the important element ; no, it is the element of relations that is this, the formal element, the immaterial element ; it is not the TI ecrnv, so to speak, but the TL TIV elvau. Always the meaning it is that is substantial and alive : the symbol, the representation in itself that is, the external thing itself is indifferent, null, idle, useless, dead. Alone the ideality is the true reality. " Learn ever," says Athos to Baoul, " to dis- tinguish between the king and the kingdom. The king is but man, the kingdom is the spirit of God. When you are in doubt as to which you should serve, forsake the material appearance for the invisible principle, for it is this that is everything." In these latter nineteenth century days, men find everything in the case (the outside) and nothing in the works (in the physical body, and not in the psychical mind). And yet the spore of this universe, the principle from which it grows, and the principle on which it sits, is not a material, but an immaterial one. This, to be sure, is to put on its head the established order of explanation, or what is currently figured for explanation ; but this, for all that, may be only to put it right. The spore of this universe that entity that approves itself as the first entity, the very first thing in existence, the principle from which it grows and on which it sits, as said, what is that ? There are those in this universe who, when explanation is wanted just when there is question of explanation generally or at all THE QUESTION OF A FIRST 7 think it enough to go back to the lower animals. Solution of every problem of genesis is easily to be found at once in the beasts beside us. Why is it man's head that comes first into the world ? Oh ! just see how it is with your dog or cat, rabbit or cow, etc., and that will settle the matter. But if so, why so in them ? Why at all ? Why the cosmical problem ? (Ah, well, suppose, in our own way of it, we say pace Aristotle that it is just because thought does come first !) 4. GOD AS SUCH FIRST The common answer to the question of what was the first entity an answer at which the appellants to the lower animals can only scoff is God God is the first entity in this universe, and it is from that entity that all else derives. To be serious that is an answer only to be reverenced ; and there are those who would think it little less than profanity to ask further. But is it, then, profanity for US \&~tkirik ? Thought iff tbp, r,onfit.it.nt.ivp. fl,p.f, pf a. ma/ii, his single function and faculty, his essence. To take it so, it is for that we are sent here we are 4 sent into this world to think. It can really not be impious to think God, then ? When one says God, when, in reply to the query of a first, one says God, does not one still say some- thing then that, as a first, requires an explanation ? God so that is only an algebraical x, absolutely unexplained in itself, absolutely unacccounted for as there, if there ! Looking at the world, you ask of it an explanation, how OL>?; it is vov<$ that moves the all, and is the cause of all ; it is the dpxn T W a>PXW, the principle of principles ; it is the purpose of the universe, it is the apxrf as we lk forward in the beginning, and the reXo? as we look backward in the end : it is impossible for anything to be better or more in power than the soul, and yet to be better or more in power than reason, than 1/01)9, that is still more impossible. That, then, is evident so far as Aristotle is con- cerned, Thought is to him the one principle of the universe : Thought is the First. 7. THE QUESTION EEMAINS But it may be objected, if we must have the fast of nature, and if even of God we must have a first, how is it that thought is to be any exception 1 If we are to see thought enthroned there as the first of all things, is 10 WHAT IS THOUGHT? there not as much cause, and the same cause, for wonder as ever ? How came thought there ? Is it not strange that it should be there ? Is not thought itself to have a first ? Nay, a first at all, a first of any kind how is that possible ? To this problem, too, there goes much that is said by Aristotle specially as regards the necessary conditions of a First. Here, however, reference to the eighth chapter of the ninth book of the Metaphysic will probably suffice which chapter is to the effect, Actum priorem esse quam potentiam et cognitione, et tempore et substantia evepyeia irporepov TTJS Bvvdfjiea)s, ^oyw, Xpovy, ovaia. How that applies to what concerns us at present, the principle of a First and Absolute, will appear from this, that what is potential cannot possibly be a first and absolute, for it may as well not be as be, and also, what may as well not be as be is by very idea doomed to be moveless for ever unless, deus intersit, an agency interfere, an agency that is an actuality, namely. So it is that, as I say elsewhere, to Aristotle, " still cos- mologically reasoning, God is an absolutely actual being. And of this reasoning the angle is that what is only potential presupposes a preceding actuality ; for to be potential only is to be such as may quite as well not be as be. In Aristotelian terms, the Trpw-rov KIVOVV, what first gives movement to this world, must in itself also be absolute functioning actuality, absolute evepyeia : for were it only potential, only SiW/u?, there were no reason, so far as it was only that, that it should become actual. What is potential, what is potential only, there is no reason in such quality for any step further." The TTpwTov KLVOVV, therefore, let it be whatever it may, thought, or whatever else, must be an actuality, and never by any possibility a potentiality merely. CHAPTEK II 1 1. THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF SCHELLING DESCARTES IN the following out of distinctions, Schelling is always most remarkably incisive ; and specially, in the immediate reference before us, in the problem, namely, of a first, he is to be found again and again, possibly at his relative best. Of this, it will suit in this place to give a sort of preliminary specimen. What we have in mind occurs in the article entitled " Cartesius," which opens the pos- thumously published writing, " Zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophic," in the beginning of the tenth volume of the Works of Schelling. What leads him to the subject is one of the proofs for the existence of God. Our problem, of course, is not precisely the existence of God, but how account for it, for thought, for existence at all indeed ! Nevertheless, for any proper sufficiency of view, all here is relevant ; and we can but deal with it as Schelling himself does. He (14) proceeds in this way : " Why I have sought to give a general notion of the philosophy of Descartes depends, in the main, on the ontological argument the production of which is proper to him. It is by this, chiefly, that he has come to be determinative for the entire course of modern philosophy. It may be said that philosophy in general is still employed in clearing up the misunderstandings due to this argu- 1 Chap, ii., though pointing to an excellent metaphysical lesson, may very well be passed by a general reader. 11 12 WHAT IS THOUGHT? merit. . . . Neither Kant, nor any one of his followers, has hit it right. . . . Descartes' own mode of it is this : The most perfect being can, not contingently, but only necessarily, exist (major premiss) ; God is the most perfect being (minor premiss), and therefore (he ought to conclude) God can only necessarily exist, for that alone lies in the premises ; but instead of that he con- cludes: God exists necessarily, and apparently brings with certainty out in this way that God exists, and seems to have proved the existence of God. But it is one thing to say, God can only necessarily exist, and quite another that God exists necessarily. From the first (God can alone necessarily exist) there follows only : therefore he exists necessarily, N.B., if he exists ; but it by no means follows that he exists." Schelling goes on expatiating on this gloss of his, or this reading of his, in regard to the argument. It is the " kind of existence " he will maintain to be alone in question, and not the existence itself as a fact. Even when Descartes declares that he clearly and distinctly under- stands that it belongs to God's nature, " ut semper existat " i.e. " that he always exists," Schelling. can again only have recourse to italics : he italicises the semper ! " From that it follows," he says, " merely again that God, if he exists, only always exists, but it does not follow that he exists. The true sense of the syllogism is always only : either God exists not at all, or, if he exists, he exists always, or he exists necessarily, i.e. not contingently ; but it is clear withal, that his existence is not proved." To judge of this peculiar gloss or reading of Schelling's in regard to the argument in question, we must first see how it is in Descartes himself. This occurs in the third and fifth Meditation ; and may be stated (as the latter has it) to run thus : " Now, if, from this alone that I can assume from my thought the idea of something, it follows that all that I clearly and distinctly per- ceive to belong to that something, does in effect belong to it, cannot I draw from this an argument and a demonstrative proof for the exist- ence of God 1 It is certain that I do not any less find in me his idea, THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF 13 the idea of a being supremely perfect, than that of any figure or any number whatever ; and I do not know less clearly and distinctly that an actual and eternal existence belongs to his nature, than I know that all that I can demonstrate of some figure or some number veritably belongs to the nature of that figure or of that number. . . . I find manifestly that existence can be no more separated from the essence of God than from the essence of a rectilinear triangle, the sum of its three angles as equal to two right angles, or say from the idea of a mountain the idea of a valley ; so that there is no less contradiction to conceive a God, that is, a being supremely perfect, who lacks existence, who lacks some perfection namely, than to conceive a mountain which is without a valley." To Descartes, evidently from this, it all comes to what import is thought in an idea. He holds that whatever he clearly and distinctly conceives to be the import of an idea, that import has a correspondent reality to its source. But he clearly and distinctly conceives such reality of import in the idea of God as can only have its source in the reality of God himself. Clear and distinct conception of import in an idea is the whole and sole consideration. It seems very clear that what reality Descartes has in mind is a reality of fact, and not merely a reality of kind. Schelling, how- ever, in his own support (16) continues thus: "In his V. Meditation, Descartes states the argument in this way : I find in me the idea of God not otherwise than, or just as, the idea of some geometrical figure, or of some number, nee, he goes on, nee minus clare et distincte intelligo, ad ejus naturam pertinere, ut semper existat. (Pay attention to this semper [it is Schelling speaks] ; Descartes does not say here, ad ejus naturam pertinere, ut existat, but only, ut semper existat.) From that, now, then, it merely follows that God, if he exists, only always exists, but it does not follow that he exists. The true sense of the argument is always only : either God exists not at all, or, if he exists, then he exists always, or, then he exists necessarily, i.e. not contingently. But with all that it is clear that his existence is not proved." It will be observed that the Latin above corresponds (in our translation from the same passage in Meditation 14 WHAT IS THOUGHT? V. itself) to this English " and I do not know less clearly and distinctly that an actual and eternal existence belongs to his nature " ; but this English, as an accurate rendering (which it is), shows the French of said semper to have been " actuelle et eternelle " (and the French is for Descartes quite as authoritative as the Latin). When one looks again, then, at the burthen of the extract from Schelling, one can only admire his extrica- tion of such vast antithesis as necessity and contingency from such so situated semper ! But he has been anxious here ; and, for what he wanted, necessity and contin- gency, he has given himself the pains to penetrate to another work of Descartes. "In an essay which is superscribed, Kationes Dei existentiam, etc., probantes ordine geometrico disposite, the conclusion runs thus : Therefore is it true to say of God, existence is in him a necessary one. . . . Descartes is himself perfectly well aware that, in his notion of the most perfect being there is properly question only of the kind of existence. And so it is that he says in the same connection : In the notion of a limited, finite being, there is implied merely possible or contingent existence, and consequently, therefore, in the notion of the most perfect being, the notion of necessary and perfect existence." Now, if Descartes did speak of what " existence " was implied in the finite, he would naturally, again, speak also of what existence and not of what mere " notion " of it was similarly implied in the infinite. It is not Schelling's cue, however, to refer at present to implica- tion in the infinite of existence in fact, but only to implication in the infinite of existence in kind, and so the word " notion I " We see in these quotations, however, all the grounds which are the warrant to Schelling to infer that, " in several passages," as his words are, Descartes concludes, " immediately, or in strictness at least only, in the way which has been notified by me." But can it be said SCHELLING DESCARTES 1 5 that even the two of them have been sufficient to make good the alleged burthen of the supposititious " several passages " ? To the quotation from Meditation V. we should cheerfully accord all possible authority ; but its single " semper " does indeed sound less of a nature metaphysical than of a nature actual, besides that the very French for it is actuelle et eternelle ; while, as for the other (the Essay, Eationes Dei Existentiam, etc.), it almost seems too distantly or too loosely placed to be allowed any express authority ; at the same time that its burthen as given may be apt too readily to suggest a Schellingian paraphrase as to be accepted in genuine avouchment of important Cartesian principles. At all events this is certain that in Meditation V. itself, the passage referred to by Schelling will be found to be succeeded by a somewhat long and express reasoning to the effect that it is not a necessary kind of existence only, but, as well, a necessary fact of existence that he, Descartes, is minded to prove. It is just possible, indeed, that the two are unadvisedly supposed to go together with Descartes, however it be with Schelling ; for, after all, what is the meaning of " existence " quite as " manifestly " belonging to the " essence " of God as, etc. etc. ? Descartes himself explains it to mean " that it is not in his liberty to conceive a God without existence " even to conceive ! " Is there anything," he asks, " of itself clearer and more manifest than to think that there is a God, that is to say, a sovereign and perfect being, in whose sole idea necessary or eternal existence is com- prised, and who, by consequence, exists." He speaks quite simply and freely of " the necessity of the existence of God," that is, as admits not of doubt, of his actual existence ; he sees " clearly that of necessity God has been before all eternity, and that he is eternally to be." He says again, " the necessity which is in the thing 16 WHAT IS THOUGHT? itself, that is, of the existence of God, determines me to have this thought " (that he veritably exists). A valley is the necessity of a mountain, and yet neither may exist, he says. But that is not so with God existence, that is, actual existence, is with him necessity. One wonders that Schelling should have been able to bring forward no stronger evidence even for the necessity he wanted than only the two references which are presently at full before us ; namely, the passage quoted by him from the Latin essay and that other from Meditation V. He certainly gets necessity from the one, but only semper from the other. He seems to have pre- ferred the semper of the Latin to the actuelle et tternelle of the French, both being before him ; while, in the latter, it is just this " actuelle et eternelle " that turns up too constantly, it may be, with the necessity as well however abundant this latter may prove all through. In short, generally, in the face of all, one can only conclude that Schelling (led to him possibly by a certain forgetfulness, as may appear) is as inaccurate in failing to see that to Descartes, existence, actual existence, follows, and not illogically follows, from the essence of God, as he is inaccurate in failing to see that, to the same Descartes, Denken, thought or thinking, is the substance of man. In the Quatrieme Par tie of the Discours de la Methode, for example, it is said, " I knew from that that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature is only to think." In the Preface to the Meditations, again, he maintains, at least by implication, " that it follows from this that the human spirit, making reflection on itself, knows itself to be nothing else than a thing that thinks, that its nature or its essence is only to think ; so that the word only excludes all the other things that we might perhaps think also to belong to the nature of the soul." And in Princip. 53, First Part, it is directly LEIBNITZ 17 declared that " Thought as much constitutes the nature and essence of the soul, as extension that of the body." That is Descartes for himself ; but here is Schelling for him : " This sum cogitans cannot be understood as though I were nothing but thinking, as though I were existent only in thinking, or as though thinking were the sub- stance of my being. Thinking is only a determination or mode and manner of my being ; nay, the cogitans has even only the meaning : I am in the state (Zustancl) of thinking ! " 2. LEIBNITZ But inaccuracy to Descartes, let its source be where it may, is, strangely again somehow, relevancy to Leibnitz. This is so much so, indeed, that, both references considered, one is almost apt to suspect, if with some compunction for meanness, that this whole deliverance of Schelling's is con- ditioned by the substitution (on what motive so ever) of the wrong name of Descartes for the right name of Leibnitz. Let me first here, however, advert a moment to what Schelling, in the same connection, holds of Kant. Kant's main objection to the Cartesian proof, he says (14), "rests on the incorrect conception that the argu- ment runs thus : I find in myself the idea of the most perfect being, but now existence itself is a perfection, and so, consequently, just of itself existence is implied in the idea of the most perfect being." " I have already remarked," Schelling immediately subjoins, " that Descartes does no % t conclude in this wise," and he then repeats (about a " necessary " existence) his gloss or reading in question. Even so far I do not think that, with what we have before us, Kant will appear to have had altogether "an incorrect conception," or wholly to have failed " to hit the right point " ; but it will clear matters to go a little further into what concerns the onto- 2 18 WHAT IS THOUGHT? logical argument generally before we turn to the reference to Leibnitz. 3. THE ARGUMENT As we see, so far as Descartes is concerned, it all comes to " a clear and distinct idea in the mind," that an all-perfect being, God, is, exists that existence, actual existence, is the inherent presupposition of his very essence. This is an appeal to an idea simply, and not strictly an argument, not strictly reasoning. Still, there is the inference involved, that existence, as being a perfection, belongs to what is all, or nothing but, perfection. This inference, however, were not the mere innate (i.e. a priori) idea to the same effect, would of itself suffice to rank the Cartesian proof with the proof of Anselm. Schelling is prompt to remark here (14) that Thomas Aquinas " most pointedly," aufs bestimmt- este, " contradicted " Anselm. Anselm, however, is still credited, on the whole rather than, and certainly in precedence of, Descartes with having invented the so- called proof ontological. If Aquinas impugned it, his reason, probably, was like that of Descartes, in exception to the contrasting proof, the proof teleological. Both objections, namely, arose from tenderness to the glory of God. Descartes, as we know, would not, for his part, with his limited faculties, presume, profanely as it were, to enter into the teleological counsels of the Almighty ; while Aquinas would know of nothing earlier certain, or more certainly certain, than the great God Himself : he can turn additionally in that reference, not, like Anselm, to the a priori (in precedence of God), but only to the a posteriori (in derivation from God). l 1 " Write down that they hope they serve God : and write God first, for God defend but God should go before such villains ! " As one sees, Aquinas only preceded Dogberry ! THE ARGUMENT 19 Anselm, then, does turn to the a priori ; and he has in the main just a single thought, and it is this. What is in thought alone must be less than what is both in thought and also in existence ; and the latter must, on the same terms, be greater than the former. Now, our idea of God is that of a being than whom nothing can be greater ; God, then, must exist : for if he did not, a greater than he greater as actually existent might be, so that our idea, as being, in truth, not of the greatest, would contradict itself. As one sees, this, after all, is but the idea of Descartes : the very thought (in us) of God involves the existence of God. The proposition has given rise to strife enough ; and, no doubt, the prevalent opinion is that it involves a fallacy. Impossibly, it is said, can any mere thought in the mind stand for, or be equal to, an actual existence : mere idealities are never realities. Still, what it comes to is this, As human beings, we must think existence into a first and one ; but if truly we must so think, then truly we just think this first and one to be ! Almost innumerable changes have been rung on this single idea ; and they will be found to be pretty fully discussed in one of my Gifford lectures. I allude there to this remark of Bacon's : " The Scripture saith, ' The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.' It is not said, ' The fool hath thought in his heart.' So as he rather saith it by rote to himself, than that he can thoroughly believe it, or be persuaded of it." Now, the common statement, and not an incorrect one, of the ontological argument is, " That it supports itself on this, that in the notion of God as the all-reallest being existence is implied, and that to think the notion of God and deny him existence is a contradiction." But that is just a more explicit way of saying what the fool " saith." The fool says there is no Gfod ; but if he means what he says God, namely, then he simply contradicts himself. 20 WHAT IS THOUGHT? Once again, it all comes to this, If it is true of thought as thought that it thinks the whole of existence into a first and one as its root, then that first and one, that root God is. It does not follow, however, that the level of that thinking is possessed by the innate idea of Descartes, and still less by the scholastic quibble, at least in form, let it be in matter as it may, the too seemingly external quirk of Anselm. 4. LEIBNITZ AGAIN But we have said that Schelling's whole account in this place of the ontological argument was relevant, not at all to Descartes, but certainly to Leibnitz. Leibnitz has conspicuously the references to "major premiss," " minor premiss," and the other such technical terms, which are no less conspicuously absent from Descartes, but which Schelling would quite as conspicuously intrude upon him. Nay, there is, to say so, conspicuously present in Leibnitz precisely such an " if " as one might be almost pardoned if tempted to regard as the suggestive prototype of that very conspicuous " N.B. if " of Schelling's own. Leibnitz, in a letter of 1710 to Bierling, has this : " It is certain, from the argument of Anselm, that God is, if only he is possible ; but the demonstration is not perfect, because it tacitly pre- supposes something, namely, the real possibility of the divine nature " ; and Schelling, as we have seen, has at least a sound of speech on similar lines when he says, " He (God) exists necessarily N.B. if he exists, but it by no means follows that he exists." Still, even if, by some fault (say) of memory, Schelling shall have transferred to Descartes what he could only have found in Leibnitz, and even if even if the " if " of the last (Leibnitz) shall have led in any way to the " if " of the first (Schelling), LEIBNITZ AGAIN 21 then this first (Schelling) must very certainly have only misunderstood that last (Leibnitz). A sentence or two will explain. Leibnitz gives 45 in his Monadologie thus (I translate): " God alone, or the necessary being, enjoys this privilege, that he necessarily exists, if only there is possible a necessary being, and as nothing prevents the possibility of a necessary being (which, as such, is free from limits, involves neither any negation, nor, con- sequently, any contradiction) ; this alone suffices for the a priori cognition of the existence of God." We have just seen these words already on the part of Leibnitz : " It is certain, from the argument of Anselm, that God is, if only he is possible ; but the demonstration is not perfect because it tacitly presupposes something, namely, the real possibility of the divine nature." What immediately follows is this : " Ens ex cujus essentia sequitur existentia, si est possibile (or just at once to translate) A (or the) being from whose essence there follows existence, if it is possible, i.e. if it has essence, exists. (This is an identical axiom, standing in no need of demonstration.) But God is a (or the) being from whose essence there follows its existence (the definition) ; therefore God, if he is possible, exists (by necessity of the notion itself). Thus you perceive how the argument is brought to a certain primitive syllogism." The " si modo est possibile," or " possibilis," is all, then, that, according to Leibnitz, requires to be added to the argument of Anselm in order to render it, as an argument, perfect. But it cannot at the same time escape notice that the addition in question must be only meant by Leibnitz to give to the argument a certain formal syllogistic completeness a completeness, indeed, that is even already implicitly present ; for Leibnitz himself immediately subjoins " ut certe est " (as he certainly is) ; and for his own preceding reasons that bear on matter, on "essentia" freedom, namely, from limitation, nega- tion, contradiction, etc. " Ergo Deus, si est possibilis, ut WHAT IS THOUGHT? certe est, hoc ipso existit (conclusio est in optima forma)." And it must be manifest to everyone here how very much the technical expression attributed by Schelling to Descartes really belongs to Leibnitz. It cannot be said, however, that, with the rest, the " si est possibilis " was also transferred from Leibnitz to Des- cartes. No ; for that point there is no special naming of Descartes : the transference, then, can be only repre- sented, if represented at all, by Schelling's own imperious " KB. if." 5. THE "KB. IF" But, even in that respect, perhaps, Schelling is not so original as he may appear, or as he may have thought himself. Not only Nicolaus d'Autricuria, but Dr. Francis Hutcheson of Glasgow as well, seems to have anticipated him, even in as much as that. One of the condemned 'sentences of the former, which he was obliged to retract, ran thus : " Dum Deum concipimus, ut ens realissimum tantum, nescimus certe an tale ens existat (Though we conceive God as the reallest being, we know not certainly whether such a being exists)." It is pre- cisely in regard to Descartes, again, that Hutcheson has this : " Only if there be any all-perfect nature is it to be inferred that it necessarily is ; but it does not follow thence that there is any such nature " (Synops. Metaphys., p. 116). Passing so much, and returning to the matter of the gloss itself which Schelling, by his italics, would in- terpolate into his various expressions, " necessary," "semper," etc., it is to be allowed that the distinction which lies in these the distinction according as the two words " necessary existence " are alternately italicised (necessary existence and necessary existence), is not with- out the hall-mark (such as it is) of its source. THE "N.B. IF" 23 It is a mean thing only to insinuate ; but it is to be hoped that what we have just seen of Schelling in rela- tion to Descartes and Leibnitz is to be understood as more than insinuation. And yet what is to be pointed to Leibnitz with an If, namely, transferred to Des- cartes without an If (the If, too, being somewhat conspicuously used), this is itself so mean that one must blush at any connection with it. May it not all be but a matter of casual forgetfulness ? Schelling was a man of superior intellect from within, and he was a man of superlative acquirement from without such a man is to be approached only with respect. Neverthe- less, Schelling, his privileges apart, and but as a man among others, was, as every one knows who has followed his history, a very peculiar man, and every man with a call is, independent of his call, but an ordinarily peculiar man. 1 Self - estimation, pride, was deep and intense in him, and yet, like Lear, " he had ever but slenderly known himself " : he could but leap to the goad. So unlike he was in that to Hegel, who was as Heraclitus in this, too, that he could say eSi&a-dfirjv epawrov, and that to him, whose whole life was but the effort to uni- versalise himself, the 0i aeavrov was the mandate of more than Delphic prerogative. Nor is it without a reflection hitherward that Schelling tells us, as we have partly seen already, that "' Descartes, by what he broached besides in regard to the initiatives of philosophy, has been far less determinative, for the entire sequel of modern philosophy, than by his proposition of the ontological proof : we may say that philosophy is still engaged with the attempt to disentangle and resolve the misunderstandings to which this argument gave occasion." Where we are, too (p. 17), we have these words: " This argument is now specially that which has been of 1 This matter is itself a peculiar matter, and would take a volume. 24 WHAT IS THOUGHT? the most determinative significance for the whole future of philosophy." It is so Schelling begins these references to Descartes ; and when one remembers that, in Schel- ling's time, Kant was understood to have put said argumentation so thoroughly to the rout that it had become out of the question even to mention it ; while it is also a remembrance that how Descartes began modern philosophy still determines it with the light of these remembrances, I say, it is not unpardonable to suppose that Schelling is yielding to what is not unusual with him, a mere bias, namely, that suits his intentions for the moment. What these intentions are cannot well be mistaken if, with what has gone before, we consider in conclusion so far this : " With this critique of the Cartesian '"' (but really Leibnitzian) "argument, we grant notv that, if not the existence, still the necessary existence of God is proved and this Begriff is now pro- perly that which has been of the most marked consequence for the whole future of philosophy." That is what Schelling conceives he has brought the & priori argument up to ; and, having once for all estab- lished the failure of Anselm, Descartes, and the rest any further, we are to understand that what we have now to see is his own success his own contrasting success in an ti priori proof not only of a necessary, but also of an actual existence of God. 6. SCHELLING HIMSELF HERE But we may first consider one or two of Schelling's decisions otherwise in regard to Descartes' argument the rather that it is the general interest before us that is concerned. The single distinction that animates the " N.B. if it SCHELLING HIMSELF HERE 25 exists " of Schelling is that the idea of the necessary constitution of an object is not tantamount to the actual existence of that object. This is the familiar " Dass- Was " of Schelling, as when he says : " The ground-thought of Hegel is that reason refers itself to the An-sich, the Wesen of things, whence it immediately follows that philosophy, so far as it holds of reason, only occupies itself with the Was of things, their Wesen. Eeason has to do with the object in its Inhalt, its An-sich ; but it has not to show that it is, for that is no longer the affair of reason, but of experience, . . . and reason, far from excluding experience, rather itself calls for it" (2, 3. 60-61). He had already said (x. 15) in. the same strain, "A triangle gets no increase of perfection from the fact of existence, or if it did, then it must be granted us to conclude of the perfect triangle that it necessarily exists." And thus, then, we are to suppose it intimated that, just as it is with the Was, the idea, of the triangle in regard of its Dass, its existence, so it is with the Was, the idea, of God in regard of the Dass, the existence of God. But is that so ? Must an inference that concerns one idea equally concern also another ? Because perfec- tion in the idea of a triangle will not give it existence, must it be just so also with the perfection of the idea and the existence of God ? Schelling himself (2, 1. 262) grants necessary existence to follow from the contingency and design in existence, but still only if it exists God, that is, only exists necessarily if he exists. Is this only " That the contrary of every matter-of-fact," as Hume says, " is still possible, because it can never imply a con- tradiction," etc ? So it is with finites we know ; but must it be so with the infinite ? Either God does, or does not, exist. But if he does not exist, he could never necessarily exist. And so, a necessary existence that does not exist ! surely that implies a contradiction a contradiction that really is simply the result of a wilful turning of the back on the reasoning itself ! At all 26 WHAT IS THOUGHT? events, it is safe to say that the reasoners themselves con- cerned had conclusively in mind the fact, not the kind, of existence in God ; and so, that the question is of, and the reasoning is to, the fact will bring all to its shortest issue. What Descartes says is only this, that he has no clearer idea of the two right angles in the three angles of a triangle than of that of actual existence in God and God is alone ! There are many triangles, and a million things besides, but there is but one God there is but one being of whom it is clear to us that actual existence in him cannot be separated from his idea in us. But observe if you will look at it to what a length Schelling is hurried in that last reference. Even the contingency of the world and the design of the world are no more for him than the a priori idea what we are to accept is this : What exists infers so much (a) This so much must be granted necessarily to exist (o) If it exists (c) \ I I (That is, both the cosmological and the teleological arguments are to be reduced to Schelling's ontological " If " !) 7. SCHILLING'S OWN ARGUMENT Schelling's object at bottom hitherto, then, has been to establish the fact that, in the hands of others, Anselm, Descartes, the ontological proof, as yet, for the actual existence of God has failed. This is the necessary premiss to the exposition of his own contrasting success. We have seen that Schelling found it advisable to have recourse to an alternate italicising of the two words necessary existence, according as they respectively determined the meaning. We may have reason in the sequel to lament not only that the same laudable practice had so far ceased, but also, and very much, perhaps, especially that it had not been extended to the little word Seyn (being), which, in Schelling's hands SCHELLING'S OWN AKGUMENT 27 presently, seems somehow to take on, occasionally, a somewhat perplexingly shot look. Examples in this reference we see at once in the passage (x. 17), with which Schelling elects to set out : " We distinguish in every existence (in allem Seyn) " (a) Das was 1st (that that Is), the subject of the Seyn, of the existence, or, as is also said, the Wesen. " (b) The Seyn itself [the Esse, qualification], which relates itself as predicate to the what is, of which, indeed, I may say, quite generally, that it is the predicate as such, that which in every pre- dicate, properly, is alone predicated. Nowhere, and in no possible proposition, is there anything else predicated than the Seyn [the qualifying Esse]. If, e.g., I say, Phoedo is well in health, what is predicated is a mode of organic, further of physical, finally of general Seyn ; or, Phsedo is in love, a mode of gemiithlichen, of sensitive Seyn. But it is always das Seyn [the Esse] that is predicated. Now, it is free for me to think das was 1st, too, that that Is, alone or pure, without the Seyn [the Esse] which I may have previously predicated of it. But if I have so thought it, then it is the pure Begriff [the pure notion] that I have so thought that in regard of which there is as yet nothing of a proposition or judgment, but just the mere Begriff (it is absurd to mix up the pure Begriff with the Seyn [the Esse] that is precisely additional to the Begriff, the predicate, namely). The subject is necessarily prior to the predicate (as indeed, in former usual logic, the subject was termed the antecedent, the predicate the consequent). Das was 1st, that that Is, is the Begriff, KO.T* t&xrjv, it is the Begriff of all Begriffs, for in every Begriff I think only that that Is, not the Seyn." Why, we may think here, is Seyn to be excluded from the very 1st, Esse from the very est, Being from the very is, precisely at the moment that asserts it ! That Seyn, however, is (as Schelling means it), the predicate Seyn, not the subject Seyn, not the pure Phsedo as himself alone, but only the Phsedo as in health, in love, etc. That is what is meant as a proposition added, a judgment added. Schelling continues : " So far, now, as I think that that Is pure, there is nothing that is in addition to the mere Begriff ; my thought is still secluded to 28 WHAT 18 THOUGHT? the pure Begriff ; to that that 7s, I cannot yet assign or attribute any Seyn [any predicate-Seyn] ; I cannot say that it has a Seyn [an esse] ; and yet it is not nothing, but very certainly withal no less something ; it is precisely das Seyn [the being] itself, avrb TO ''ON, ipsum Ens Seyn is still to it or for it in the mere Wesen [inner being], or in the mere Begriff ; it is the Seyn [the being] of the Begriff itself ; or it is the point, where Seyn and Denken [being and thought] are [literally is] one. In this mereness, I must at least a moment think it." Here we see that Schelling thinks the pure subject of Seyn, whereas we may remember, looking close, that Hegel in his notorious Seyn und Nichts ist dasselbe meant Seyn as pure predicate. He, then, who knows what Hegel was to Schelling at last, may suspect that " Seyn und Denken eins ist " to signify, with the context, this, That Schelling, subverting his detested rival's Seyn, will set his own in the place of it ! We have to understand, then, so far, that, in every proposition, it is the notion itself that is the main thing, that which, whatever may be said of it, is the Is, the thing that, specially and properly, now and always, and in the whole of the matter, Is. It is absurd, he says, to confound the pure Begriff, notion, subject, itself with that, the predicate, that is adventitious to it. In this way, we see that it is alone the pure Begriff, what has been called the subject, the Wesen we see that it is this, the pure subject (not the predicate), that is to be refined away, into disappearance, as it were. Phsedo is to have neither health, love, nor anything else. He is to be the pure Phaedo. As Strato became so thin that, quite un- observedly, he went out ; so we are to figure, Schelling's Phaado to pass mira tenuitate from Seyn into Denken, and yet not to " go out," but to hold of both. Phsedo, so qualified, or rather indeed Phsedo so unqualified that is the point where " Seyn und Denken eins ist." And really, if we will but figure the position closely SCHILLING'S OWN ARGUMENT 29 enough, we shall find ourselves pretty free to agree with the conclusion so far. Surely a mere subject for pre- dicates (but itself without any), a mere invisible line without a vestige of breadth, surely that, by a very mira tenuitas, is quite as much thought as being, and quite as much being as thought. But here now comes the close, the coup, the coup-de-thddtre, the consumma- tion, for which all that we have seen as yet has been only preparing : " But I cannot maintain it [the Seyn as a moment ago it (see last extract) was left] I cannot maintain it in this abstraction ; it is, namely, impossible that what is (that that is, das was 1st), of which I now know nothing further than that it is the beginning, the title for all that follows but is itself as yet nothing it is impossible that what is the title, the presupposition, the beginning for all Seyn, for all being, that this not also "is" this "is" being taken in the sense of existence, that is to say, of a being that is outside, too, of the Begriff" There ! we have it now that is the way, the true way at last, the only way, to prove the actual existence that is wanted ! Schelling himself cries : "And therewith the Begriff immediately converts, transforms itself for us into its opposite, its contrary : we find what we had established as the Beent itself, das Seyende selbst, certainly again, now, also as the Beent, the Seyende, but this time the Beent, the Seyende, in a quite other that is to say, expressly in the predica- tive, or, as we may likewise term it, objective sense (gegenstandlichen Sinn) ; whereas we previously thought it as the Beent, as the Seyende, only in the primitive sense (urstandlichen Sinn). Here is the most perfect conversion of the subject into the object as in the pure Begriff it was the mere, pure subject (suppositum, for these two expressions, again, are equivalent), or the pure first of being, pure Urstand des Seyns so it is in immediate consequence of its Begriff (just by virtue of its Begriff to be the Beent itself, the Seyende selbst) so it is immediately before we can look round, the objectively Beent, the objectively existent, the gegenstdndlich Seyende" " Here is the most perfect conversion of the subject into the object I " 30 WHAT IS THOUGHT? On these foundations Schelling now proceeds to build further : " But if we look closer at this objective Beent, this gegenstdndlich Seyende, how will it seem to us ? Manifestly as that that can not not-be, and consequently, as the necessarily, the blindly, Beent. The blindly Beent, accurately, is that which no possibility of itself has preceded itself. I act, e.g., blindly when I do something with- out having previously conceived for myself its possibility. If the act foreruns the thought of the act, then this is a blind act, and equally so that existence (Seyn) which no possibility has preceded ; which could never not-l>e, and therefore also never properly be ; which rather forestalls its own possibility as such such an existence is a blind existence (Seyn). It might be objected : but we have first spoken of that that Is, and characterised it as the Prius, as the First (the Urstand), that is, as the possibility of existence, the possibility des Seyns. Quite right ; but we also directly added thereto, there is no keeping of it in this Priority, and therefore, although it is the Prius, still it is never as the Prius ; the transition is an unprevent- able one, it (the what is) is an sich (in itself), consequently there is not a moment's possibility that what is (that that is) should not be, consequently not a moment's possibility to think it as not being. But that now, for which it is impossible not to be (quod non potest non-existere), for it, too, it is never possible to be for every possibility to be implies also the possibility not to be consequently that for which it is impossible not to be is neither ever in the possibility to be, and existence (das Seyn), actuality, precedes the possibility. Here, now, then, we have the idea, the notion, of the necessarily bee'nt, of the necessarily existent Being, and it is at once intelligible from this genesis of it, with what force it (the idea), as it were, throws itself upon consciousness, and takes from it every freedom. It is the idea, the notion, against which thought, the mind, loses all its liberty." Since Schelling's words that closed the critique of Descartes in the present reference, what we have had under eye has been the matter of the three pages 17, 18, and 19 in the original ; and it is not unworthy of being a little longer dwelt upon. No doubt, all through, there has been a very real lesson for us in metaphysical subtlety. That, in what concerns these so very difficult thoughts, SCHELLING'S OWN ARGUMENT 31 must have been so ; while as for difficulty the words that conveyed them were probably found not one whit less vexatious of catch than the thoughts themselves. Of the thoughts the course was to this effect, that while there is in all predication a subject of it, it is possible by successive strainings, as it were, to elutriate not only predication itself as predication, but even also the subject of it as the subject, in the one case into a predication ultimate and pure, and, in the other, into a subject ultimate and pure a subject that shall be, that shall simply be, and no more than be pure being, pure Seyn eben das Seyn selbst, just being itself, avro TO "Ov, ipsum Ens. The conversion that follows now means that this pure subject, as yet only Begriff, as yet only mental, falls into reality, falls into existence outside of the mind even through its own pure predication, pure predication which it itself involves shall we say, which it itself involves as to say so so much flesh of its own ! For the words, it is here perhaps that the chief difficulty comes in in respect to those, namely, that concern this ens necessarium, that concern the con- stitution, as it were, of this ens necessarium. As regards subject and predicate, and the conversion itself, we shall grant it quite possible to think all this. This is pure abstraction, and pure abstraction is quite possible for the mind that is, supposititiously, so pre- pared. But then this is not a First. This subject that on terms of the ontological problem is to be a first, is, after all, not, in any respect, possibly a First. All that predication is still before it all that predication has been simply assumed I And with the assumption of predication there has been no less the necessary assump- tion of the subject and predicate of a proposition ; which proposition, let it be even granted absolute, that is, in 32 WHAT T8 THOUGHT? its purity absolute, still it is but a residuum from else- where. Its subject, consequently, is not a priori, but just like everything else, a mere a posteriori product. What we have is but a result a result of abstraction. What it all comes to is just that Seyn, existence, has been simply assumed ; and Schelling has no more right in fact, infinitely less right to see in Seyn a subject of it, than Hegel, Nothing. But, for the words, we shall, without a doubt, find our best illustration when we draw into consideration what concerns, as said, the constitution of the ens necessarium. What comes first here is that Schelling calls that ipsum ens of his a " blind " ens ; and as much as that, on the assumption that Schelling's First is rightly to be regarded as the First, must be allowed to pass as tropically in place. What is concerned, says Schelling, is that " that cannot not-be, and, consequently, the necessarily, the blindly, Bee'nt (das nicht nicht seyn Konnende und demnach das nothwendig, das blind Seyende) " ; for what blindly is means what, unintroduced, unled up to, is just at once, to the fore, there, as it were, blindly. For blindly, and in precisely the same association, we prefer to say abstractly. An absolute First cannot but be abstract. It is, as it were, at once into existence ; there was no other before it, there is no other on any side of it, for it there can be no question of another; it is alone and isolated; reason for its existence, apart from itself, there is none, it is itself its own sole possibility, and its own sole actuality : and all that is to say that it is abstract blind, if you will. Now such blind, such abstract, is to be allowed to be a necessarily existent ; and a necessarily existent is what could not but be, what, in Schelling's words, " could not not-\)Q." And that refers, undoubtedly, to the very first prerequisite in place, a being, an existence, for which as SCHELLING'S OWN ARGUMENT 33 from elsewhere, cause there is none ; and such a being, such an existence, is, very intelligibly, abstract : it is uupreceded by anything whatever. Such phrases, further, as " That that cannot not-loe" " That for which it is impossible not to be," become presently intelligible to us when we realise their application as to something that always was and never was not. It is just that constitu- tion, however, that necessitates on the part of the words describing it, involuntarily, an apparent contradiction, or a very real grammatical one. What never was not, for example, was never even possible ; for, unpreceded by anything whatever, it was unpreceded by possibility itself. It is so Schelling conceives it. That blind ens of his did undoubtedly forerun and forestall its own possibility. It could never not be ; and neither (so Schelling) could it ever properly be (es nie nicht-seyn und darum auch nie eigentlich seyn konnte). That, namely, for which it is impossible not to be for that it is also never possible to be, and therefore is that for which it is impossible not to be, never also in the possibility to be (dem es ?mmoglich ist nicht zu seyn quod non potest non-existere diesem ist es auch nie moglich zu seyn, also ist das, dem es unmoglich ist nicht zu seyn, auch nie in der moglichkeit zu seyn). These, no doubt, are very extraordinary expressions. Ordinary speech, at all events, seems directly set at nought by them. We have named the reason for them ; but it is a question, for all that, whether they are allowable. We are given to understand, for example, that there is something of which it is possible to say that it " could never not-be" at the same time also that it is equally possible and for that very reason to say of it that it " could never properly be " I What is " in the impossibility ever not to be " is equally also " never in the possibility to le " ! We have not inadvertently, misarranged the 3 34 WHAT IS THOUGHT? phrases : in themselves, and in their order, and in their import, they are Schelling's own. He does, indeed, as though in explanation, add once, " For every possibility to be implies in it likewise the possibility not to be." That is very true, we say, of a thing that is only potential, only possible ; but what of the impossible ? There is certainly an oscillation of alternatives in the possible ; but there is no oscillation in the impossible no parting of the ways in it, no looking right or left in it. What is only possible will remain so till doomsday, or for ever after. Possibility is the eternal oscillation. Its demur of alternatives, however, is, in the impossible, " summarily truncated." Ought not Schelling here to have been less in earnest with these alternatives ? or with the general antithesis of possible and impossible at all ? Abstractly used, both expressions are absolutely meaningless. If, in suggestion of his own possibility, Schelling thought at all of the possibility of Leibnitz (not that he could do so if thinking only of Descartes), it is a pity that he did not think also of Leibnitz's " essentia." Leibnitz knew that such terms possible, impossible would have no relevance to God unless God had an " essentia " that should give them, so to speak, purchase ; and such " essentia " he did find in the nature of God as free from limitation, negation, contradiction, etc. (Of course, we are concerned with the reasoning of Leibnitz only so far.) Certainly necessity, not possibility, constitutes the being of the blind ens ; but are we to deny for this ens, even by reason of the necessity of its existence, the very possibility of its existence ? If it was possible to premise for this blind ens, negatively, an impossibility not to be, was it not equally possible and by no more than the force of syntax to premise for it, positively, a literal possibility to be ? impossibility not to be is certainly SCHELLING'S OWN AKGUMENT 35 in grammar possibility to be ! Not only its necessity is a fact, but its actuality is a fact : argal, & fortiori, its possibility is a fact. 1 Is it more than an abuse of language to say that a thing, because it has a necessity to be, is at once neither possible to be nor impossible not to be ? Of course, the whole paradox springs from the abstractness of the existence supposed. If it was unpreceded by possibility, it might be permissible to say that it was " never in the possibility to be," or even that it was " never possible for it to be " ; but was it not on the whole " to play it rather low down " to say of what could " never not-\)Q " that, just for that very reason, " it could also never properly be (darum auch nie eigentlich seyn konnte) " ? Surely that at least is an expression that, placed as it is, must be allowed to exceed every possible bound of any equitable possibility an expression that transcends possibility itself. At all events, the situation is so peculiar that one would have liked from Schelling a little humour over it rather than that apparent earnest ! Seriously, however, it is also to be said indeed, it has been said already that, in the whole process of that abstract, absolute subject, it may be ours to find an excellent lesson metaphysically to wJiet : nor yet without gains as regards the problem in hand. We have learned, for example, that a First must be abstractly a First ; and it cannot not be : it is necessarily existent ; and it holds of both worlds, the ideal and the real. So far, however, the product of demonstration is not yet to Schelling, God not yet God as popularly believed or known. 1 Why, does not Aristotle himself tell us (23a, 16-18), "that, since the particular follows the universal, the possible follows the necessary." Always, as everybody knows, the greater contains the less. 36 WHAT IS THOUGHT? " The first thing in the idea of the blindly existent," he says, " assuredly is that to what it is, it is without all freedom. . . . But what, as against its own being, is without freedom, that is absolutely unfree. . . . Were he only the blindly existent, God would not be God. . . . As God, he is at the same time that which can cancel its own of its own self independent being, transform its necessary being into a contingent, namely, into a self -set one so that aufond it always remains such necessity, but not so, nevertheless that the effective actual being of God were merely this necessary being. . . . In the idea of God there is absolute freedom of will and act. . . . Otherwise he were unable to move, stir, go out from himself, from his being, in order to set, realise another." So, " the question is only," says Schelling, " how this antinomy is to be resolved : to show this is the affair of philosophy itself " ; and it is thus he leaves it. In leaving it, too, let Schelling have suggestively expatiated as he may, perhaps he has left more for his reproach than want of humour, and even in regard of that same possible-impossible of his. Was not his conclusion there but a stumble back again into that very potentiality which Aristotle had cogently demon- strated to be impossible as a First ? That " blind ens " of his, it could neither be nor not be ; and so it neither was nor was not ! Necessary actuality itself reduced itself, by an involuntary felo de se, into a mere con- tingent potentiality ! When one reflects, too, that he had before him, for a good half-century, the scroll of a perfect veteran " in the art of converting and trans- forming " categorical (not trigonometrical !) formulas, one wonders that Schelling could have turned for assistance to his own necessary existent one away from the category of science and to the conception of popular belief. Another had a Sesame whereby to open the rock of necessity into the infinitude of free-will and all the treasures of the Begriff ; but Schelling could not even see that what has its necessity within itself is sufficient for itself, is without dependence on any other, and so free ! CHAPTER III 1. THE PROBLEM OF A FIRST BUT now we may remind ourselves that, in regard to our general problem of a First, there was still question of difficulty even with suggestion of Thought, vovs itself, as that first. In view, then, of our more immediate general theme, the problem of a First, it is evident that we are beset, in whatever way we take it, on all sides, with the most uncompromising steeps. There are those who, deciding on nature as a First, lead the flock at present ; but they can but envy the faith lavished on them by their own innocent sheep. Marching triumphantly enough, even vain-gloriously enough, some of them, at the head as they do, presently they falter, too, as taken diaphrag- matically at times with the thought But how did all that come there ? They fall suddenly sick, I say, and they falter under the sense even of the natural before them that is the supernatural ; but a shout of the innocents from behind warns them of where they are, and they resume their countenance of the march with a kick, this kick, It is mere " rubbish " thinking of any origin at all ! Of the difficulties of God as a First we have already seen suggestions. The more our wonder grows and glows under the immensity of a God, not the less, but all the more, also, it grows and glows under the incomprehensi- bility of his Whence ? his How ? his Why ? and his What ? 38 WHAT IS THOUGHT? Nor is it different with Thought as Thought. To the vast majority of human beings at present, indeed, the mere proposition, of Thought as a First, is meaningless. Thought where there is nothing to think of Thought before there is anything to think of that is nonsense ! Still, if even with nothing, we cannot get rid of the something from which it is but the reflection, so, with a " blind ens," we can only come to the idea of eyes. An object that is not a subject is a null. A creation that does not see itself, know itself, is recreant, miscreant. To see, then, to know, then, is the End ; and the End is the First \ Nay, to a logic itself that is a logic, the first dot is at once also the first thought : not a move on the board that is unaware ! Besides, thought at least is-, thought is an actuality; thought is in rcrum natura: and so we are at least bound to inquire into what it is ; and the what may lead to a how or a why. Socrates always insists on us telling what a thing is ; and so it may be well for us to tell what Denken as Denken, what thought as thought, just is. We can tell what sensation, perception, memory, imagination, or even higher, what apprehension, judgment, reasoning, just are ; but can we do the same thing by thought ? Can we really tell what thought just is ? 2. THE EATIO Now, the strange thing is that just what I have got singly and specially to declare here is, that the whole of philosophy, the whole series of philosophies in time, have within them no one question whatever, but this of thought. In simple and good truth philosophy asks, and has, in fact, never at any time asked ought else than what is thought ? It may come somewhat as a surprise to a good many THE RATIO 39 of us, something of a revelation to not much fewer of us, if I say, Thought is the ratio between "/" and "Me," or, Thought is the ratio that is implicitly within the "/" itself. It is just this proposition, however, that I hope to substantiate and, beyond all cavil, prove. I have talked of the world elsewhere as having been " befooled " by the system of Kant, and have asked, " Where, according to this system, is there a single truth in the whole huge universe ? " I am still of the same mind as to what in that reference is concerned. Action apart, or apart what morally and legally is right, and leaving what is cesthetical wholly aside, I know not that there is anywhere any truth accessible to Kant. To him, namely, in consequence of his findings under his three rubrics in regard to (1) Time and Space, (2) the Categories, and (3) the Ideas, the entire world of Knowledge is but as a soap-bubble between two wholly unknown and merely supposititious x's the x of an unknown and supposed Thing-Initself on one side for Sensation, and the x of an unknown and sup- posed Supreme Being (Thing-Initself) on the other s.ide for Belief. Call the second not x but y, then Kant's world is but a soap-bubble a between an x and a y. Nevertheless, I say, too, that the whole of philosophy that deserves the name since Kant is so absolutely due to Kant that it can properly and comprehensively receive no other name than his. Fichte has worked, Schelling has worked, Hegel has worked each of them has worked, no one of them has worked but in the quarry of Kant. There is no product in Fichte, there is no product in Schelling, there is no product in Hegel, that is not to be named Kan- tian. Fichte's philosophy, Schelling's philosophy, Hegel's philosophy each of these, in accurate and precise name, 40 WHAT IS THOUGHT? is Kantian philosophy. And with Kant and these we have in modern times all all that is capital ; grate- fully counting in, as well, an introductory few, and leaving prattle individually to the irresponsible rest. We cannot say that there is any particular stratum in the general section of Kant which has not been tapped and turned to service philosophy and science, idealism and realism (the empirical), gnostic and ag- nostic, sobriety and subtlety, or even super-subtlety and the spectral; still, the main stratum that has been so used and what is, in point of fact, the main must be acknowledged to be that which contains the twelve beds of the Categories. Now, what do these twelve beds start from what is the original principle of them to which they all refer ? We have this from Hegel : l "The Critical philosophy has it in common witli Empirical science to regard experience as the sole ground of our cognitions ; which cognitions, however, are to it not truths, but only perceptions of appearances. . . . As the special source of the notions of the understanding, this philosophy assigns the orginal identity of the Ego in thought (im Denken) (the transcendental unity of self- consciousness). . . . The complex of sensation and perception, in that the Ego refers it to itself, and unites it within itself, as in a single cognition (pure apperception), is in this way brought into identity, into an original nexus. The particular modes of this nexus are the pure notions of the understanding, the Categories." Kant, at first, expresses himself so depreciatingly of the Ego as in any sense an entity that one cannot escape a feeling of distinct and difficult discrepancy, when one finds the same Kant dwelling, with so much breadth of emphasis, on perfectly the same Ego, apparently, but now as the all-indispensable unity of apperception. Nevertheless, when one gives a thorough consideration to the whole sup- plementary deduction of the Categories which the second edition of the Kritik of Pure Reason extends to us, one 1 Encyc., i. 85, 89, 90. THE RATIO 41 will be apt to conclude that one has not gone very far wrong if one has even named said " modes of nexus," functions of the unity of apperception, and functions therefore of the Ego itself. That is precisely what we wish to bring it to here. To Kant, the Categories are in reality, or at least implicitly, nothing but modes, functions of, or derivations from, the unity of the Ego. That they were such to Fichte is . but the single express declaration of his text. Somewhat of a preliminary light of support may be thus thrown on what is our starting proposition and our cardinal point. Thought is the ratio between " I " and " Me " ; or thought is the ratio that is implicitly within the " I " itself. As such, indeed, we may even say that it is proprio Marte, the Ratio the Eatio the absolute Eatio. Observe, too, that it is a ratio between, a ratio within ; and that already will differentiate it from much. 3. THE EATIO CONTINUED But let it be characterised as it may, still we may ask, the ratio of what ? Why, then, placed where we have placed it, or as we have placed it, it is the Eatio of Subject and Object. But this at once grates, this at once almost shocks, repels. One has heard so much in these latter days of subject and object, and of what in this connection is only meaningless or worse, that the impulse of the moment is to turn away in disgust. If one is to hear, again and again, only repetition of that German " clotted nonsense," then one has no hope. And here we have not only " subject and object," but Ratio of subject and object ! How are we to understand that in all the world, how possibly realise that ? Object ! All is an object the word conveys to us only a vacuum, only what is indefinite 42 WHAT IS THOUGHT? certainly magni nominis umbra! And subject? Subject as subject is not a whit better, it is, again, a word only of an infinite reference. Still, the latter word ought easily to have more of individuality and singleness of positive meaning for us. The subject that is here meant is simply the " I," and you yourself are " I." You say of yourself " I" and when you say of yourself " I," you mean that you are then and there the subject. But I, too, when I say of myself " I," mean precisely the same thing the same thing that you mean ; and he, too, when he says of himself " I," means precisely the same thing that we both mean. In short, when I say " I," when you say " I," when he says " I," there is but a single / between us. Let us call it x, then this x does not in the slightest differ in either of the three cases : it is absolutely the same in all of them. Every man is " I," and all of us are " I." The question who ? who is it ? so put to any subject to God himself can only be answered by " I." To his own self and we desire to say it without profanity God himself can only be "I." He, indeed, it is who has said, " I AM THAT I AM." 4. THE EATIO CONTINUED What all this may come to in the end we shall not say now. We would only emphasise, so far, what the bare word " I " means certainly, in the first instance, even grammatically so. And even so, " I " is the universal subject " I " is the subject, throughout all space and throughout all time there is but one " I." This one " I " is as " I " one and the same identical " I " it is one and the same se//-identical " I " it is the self -identical " I." SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 4 3 But what does that mean ? Is there any " I " that is not the self -identical " I " ? or let us just put it : Is there any " I " that is not a self -identical " I " ? But whatever is self-identical is but the same thing twice. When I say to myself " I," I simply confront myself with myself when I say to myself " I," I mean, as it is said, " Me " ; but such Me, grammar apart, is no more than " I." " Grammar apart," we say ; but, in- essential, unsubstantial, as it is, that mere Me of grammar introduces and makes overt the most pene- trating, exhaustive, and ecumenical of distinctions. " I " as " I " is subject ; but " Me " as " Me " is object. When I say " I " to myself, I mean Me. I (subject) mean Me (object). Now that is the Ratio ; that is the Eatio. And the allegation is that the Eatio is Thought the allegation is that the Eatio is Thought as Thought. " My own ratio fills me, which, secerned, Apart from me, is no more me, but mine The world : One absolute proportion is the whole." 1 5. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS " My own ratio fills me" And what does that mean, but that the filling of self-consciousness (" me ") is pre- cisely, expressly, accurately, the Eatio in question ? What constitutes and makes up self-consciousness its stock, its matter, its exact content is the Eatio of Subject and Object. " A fulcrum was found in the nature of self-consciousness. Till self -consciousness acts, no one can have the notion ' I ' no one can 1 From " I Am That I Am," in Journal of Speculative Philosophy for October 1877 ; reprinted in Saved Leaves. 44 WHAT IS THOUGHT? be an * I.' In other words, no one knows himself an ' I, ; feels him- self an ' I,' names himself an ' I ' is an ' I, ; until there be an act of self-consciousness. In the very first act of self-consciousness, then, the ' I ' emerges, the ' I ' is born ; and before that it simply was not. But self -consciousness is just the ' I,' self -consciousness can be set identical with the ' I ; : the ' I,' therefore, as product of self- consciousness, is product of the ' I ' itself. The * I ' is self-create, then ! * I ' start into existence, come into life, on the very first act of self -consciousness. ' I,' then (' I,' so to speak, was not an ' I ' before) am the product of my own act, of my own self-con- sciousness. Of course, I am not to figure my body and concrete personality here, but simply the fact that without self-consciousness nothing can be an * I ' to itself, and with the very first act of self- consciousness ' I ' begins. . . . Said self -consciousness is figured, too, not, so to speak, as subjective (as possessed by some one individual), but as objective and general, as substantive and universal." That is an extract from the Secret of Hegel (ed. 2, pp. 87, 48) ; and the general interest concerned is so much in connection with the subject of that work, that we shall venture to quote from it, still further in illustra- tion, a considerable number of passages of a like relative import. CHAPTEK IV SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS THE EGO HERE, in this chapter, these passages follow : " The Idea is Thought, self-identical Thinking ; self -identical because in its own nature the Idea is two-sided an objective side is, as it were, exposed and offered to a subjective side, and the result is the return, so to speak, of the Idea from its other, which is the objective side, into its self or subjective side, as satisfied, grati- fied, and contented Knowledge " (Secret of Hegel, p. 22). " Cogito ergo Sum. That is, Thought is ; it has come to be, it simply is as yet, however, only in itself : there is as yet only blank self-identity it can only say is, rather than am, of itself, or to itself " (37, 38). " This is just a description in abstracto of Self -consciousness. The Ego is first unal simplicity, that is, unal or simple negativity ; but just, as it were, for this very reason (that is, to know itself and be no longer negative, or because it finds itself in a state of negativity) it becomes self-separated into duality it becomes a duplication, a duad, the units of which confront each other, in the forms of Ego- subject and Ego-object ; and then, again, this very self-separation, this very self-duplication, becomes its own negation the negation of the duality, inasmuch as its confronting units are seen to be identical, and the antithesis is reduced, the antagonism vanishes. This process of self -consciousness has just to be transferred to the All, the Absolute, the Substance, to enable us to form a conception of unal negativity of Spirit passing into the alienation of external nature, finally to return reconciled, harmonious, and free into its own self. " The intermedium is the first step in the divine process (the phase of universality, latent potentiality being first assumed) ; it is re- flection into its ownself, and as such only and no more, it is the awakening of consciousness, the kindling, the lighting, the flashing 45 46 WHAT IS THOUGHT? up of the Ego, which is pure negativity as yet. First, the Ego was only in or at itself, everywhere in general and nowhere in particular, that is, latent only, potential only (the formless infinite, indefinite nebula) ; then comes reflection of this into itself or on to itself, and this reflection is a sort of medium, an element of union, a principle of connection between self and self. In this stage the previously indefinite comes to be for itself ; that is to say, in the physical world it is a finite, circumscribed, individual entity, and in the metaphysical a self -consciousness. . . . An Ego in consciousness : Ego is immediate to Ego, focus to focus ; the mediacy then leads only to a condition of immediacy. Process is no prejudice to unity, nor mediacy to immediacy ; it is a one, a whole, an absolute, all the same " (51). " From the position that thought is the all and the prius, it follows that thought must contain in itself a principle of progression or movement. Thought's own nature is, first, position ; second, oppo- sition ; and third, composition. It is evident that, however we figure a beginning of thought, in God or ourselves, it must possess a mode of progression, a mode of production, and that is absolutely impossible on a principle of absolutely simple, single unal identity. The first, then, though unal, must have separated into distinctions (opposites, contraries) ; and these by union, followed again by disunion and reunion ad infinitum, must have produced others till thought became the articulated organon which it is now. Reunion, evidently, is a step as necessary as separation " (58). " We have been desperately hunting the whole infinite, unreach- able heaven for an absolute, which, folded up within us, smiled in self-complacent security at the infatuation of its very master. Or what we wanted lay at the door ; but to and fro we stepped over it, vainly asking for it, and plunging ourselves bootlessly into the farforest' ; (59). " God abstractly is the mere empty word, the infidel God ; he is true only as concrete in Christianity, the God-Man " (64). " Every ' I' is just an ' I,' and so we can throw aside the idea of subjectivity, and think of the absolute ' I ' : but the absolute ' I ' is Reason. Reason is ascribed to every man as that which constitutes his Ego ; we can thus conceive Reason as per se } as independent of this particular subject and that particular subject, and as common to all. We can speak of Reason, then, as now not subjective but objective " (88, 89). " Subjectivity, however, is the principle of central energy and life : it is the Absolute Form" (112). THE EGO THE NOTION 47 "Kant's theory of perception, a theory in which all the three moments of the notion have place : the subsumption of the particular, namely, under the universal to the development of the singular ; (and this is the notion, this is self -consciousness) " (134). " The notion, the logical notion, the notion as notion, is itself a reciprocity, and the ultimate reciprocity of universality, particularity, and singularity" (139). " Such, indeed, is the inner nature, the inner movement, the rhythm of self -consciousness itself; and self-consciousness is the priusof All" (140). " The notion (self-consciousness in its simplest statement) is the one soul, the one spirit which is life vitality itself and the only life the only vitality " (142). " The movement of the notion : that, certainly, is the ultimate nerve of thought. This is the nerve of self-consciousness ; and self- consciousness is the absolute. Self-consciousness is now identified with the notion : we must now suppose self-consciousness the absolute. Self-consciousness necessarily, and of its own self, is, and is what is. Self-consciousness is its own foundation of support, and its own prius of origination. Self-consciousness, being but thought, requires evidently no foundation to support it : notions of a founda- tion on which to support it, or of a prius to which to attach it, are manifestly inapplicable to it. It is the necessity. Since there is a universe, something must have been necessary. Now, this some- thing is just self -consciousness. Self -consciousness is the necessity to be. It is in the nature of self -consciousness that it should be its own cause, and its own necessity, and its own world. Thought is a necessity, and the only necessity, and thought is self -consciousness. All that is exhibits in its deepest base the type of self -consciousness, the type of thought. " Thought or self-consciousness cannot be impersonal : thought or self -consciousness always implies a subject. Why hesitate to name it God ? The self-consciousness of the universe is the divine self- consciousness and not the human" (160, 161, 163.) " The notion, in fact, is the absolute universal of thought, the primal or ultimate nerve, which is the primitive and original form. It is causa sui and prindpium sui. The ego is, firstly, the universal ; it is identity, it is immediacy. The ego, secondly, surveys itself ; that is, it gives itself, or becomes to itself, the particular, the differ- ence, the discernment, the reflection. The ego, thirdly, returns from survey of itself with increase of knowledge ; that is, returning into itself (the universal) from or with the particular, it does not just 48 WHAT IS THOUGHT? resume its old identity, but is now the singular, which is identity, in diversity, immediacy in reflection, the universal in the particular. This is but the form and movement of self-consciousness as self- consciousness, of the ego as ego " (167, 170, 174, 175). " The notion is the a priori synthetic judgment. This is the pulse of self -consciousness ; this is the nerve of the ego " (190). "To perceive that Apprehension itself (or Apperception or the Ego), perfectly generally expressed, constitutes the notion" (191). " The ultimate principle is the pure negativity ; and even such is ego as ego, or self-consciousness as self-consciousness " (200). " The three cognitive faculties are but the three moments of the notion " (204). " This evolution of thought's own self to thought's own self, what is it but the universe 1 Thus is it that thought is the pure negativity (as negative of all other), and, to its own self, sets is own negative which is the object" (353). " Thought is the prius of all " (356). "We can conceive what is as the one identical, infinitesimal spore, whose vibration is its difference and that is the all of thought as exhibited. What is the universe if not the one absolute Voice inflecting itself into its involved voculations the absolute articula- tion of the absolute one and that one is just thought : thought's own native articulations constitute the all of things " (387). "The notion is the vital heart of all, and for the notion self- consciousness is but another name " (720). " The principle of self-consciousness contains within itself both difference and identity, and a little reflection will make it plain that there can be no possible explanation of this world without a prin- ciple that contains both elements. The origin of difference in identity is the point and focus of the whole problem ; but we have that at once in self-consciousness. ... I, too, like other philosophers, would like to explain existence ; but what does that mean ? Evi- dently, I must find a single principle, a single fact in existence, that is adequate to all the phenomena of existence, to all the variety of existence ; and this principle, while adequate to all the variety of existence, while competent to reduce into its own identity all the difference that is, must bring with it its own reason for its own self, its own necessity, its proof that it is, and it alone is, that which could not not be. . . . The constitutive movement of self-conscious- ness is the idealisation of a particular (the object) through a uni- versal (the thought) into a singular (the subject) ; or it is the realisation of a universal through a particular into a singular. . . . THE EGO THE NOTION 49 We would find an explanation of all that is in some actual con- stituent of all that is. ... Self -consciousness is in the world of facts. . . . Self-consciousness is a fact, it is something in rerum natura, a principle actually existing " (Lectures on the Philosophy of Law, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14). CHAPTER V 1. PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE WHAT is alluded to there in the last extracts is an advantage which is generally assumed to be possessed by science alone, and not by philosophy at all. For it is not, possibly, too much to say that the word philosophy, common and current though it be, has still for the most of us but a very vague and indefinite meaning. Science, we know, explains to us all that we see there around us, and hence it is, as I suppose is generally assumed to go without saying, that we possess what is called civilisa- tion, and hence so far at least as that extends in some sort a rational life in a finally inexplicable endless- ness. Science, too, has principles truths that found entire structures of knowledge, but which, for all that, are patent to the plainest. Now, no doubt, it is that which philosophy, in current opinion, has hitherto wanted. And so, one may have been apt to speculate in the past, were philosophy seen to grow from a Fact, to develop a Fact a single principle a single principle in rerum natura, that would give intelligibleness, certainty, and security to every further progress, to every ulterior outcome were philosophy this, and if philosophy did this, would it not be generally seen into at last, and would it not receive at last that confidence on the part of the bulk of mankind which is at present denied it, and which so far is reserved for science alone ? Now, it is this which has been at least broached in 50 PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 51 some of our last citations ; and certainly, if the Ego Ego as Ego can be allowed to constitute a single ground- fact or principle, as, say, heat is, or light is, or gravi- tation is, which fact or principle is capable of being operated on to the extrusion and extraction of a whole system of explanatory and indubitable truth if I say the Ego, Ego as Ego, can be so regarded, is not the thing done is it not now for philosophy itself to regard itself as, at long and last, science, simply science ? But now, the absolute self-identity, the single unit that alone founds and grounds that alone forms and composes that alone constitutes the infinite resultant compound of this whole vast universe that single unit is the Ego, simply Ego as Ego. Not that the evolution in proof can be, as those in regard of heat, light, gravita- tion, etc., in its kind physical. The Ego is not itself physical as these are. It certainly is in rerum natura ; but, just as it is in rerum natura, or according to the way in which it is in rerum natura only so is it possible that it can be treated. The necessity is this, that the single principle of the Ego should be so operated on as to develop to reason its situation in the universe. To all philosophy, to all that is truly philosophy, it is the single question of the universe that is alone the interest : the what of it, the why of it, the whence of it, and the whither of it. Man, in that he is of sense, is finite : but man, in that he is of thought, is a spirit and infinite. So it is that, if he has his week-day of work, he has not less his Sabbath-day of religion. And so it is also that, if he has his scientist to minister to the commodity of the finite, he is not without never has been without never will be without his philosopher to minister to the necessity of the infinite. So, then, as it is to the philosopher and not to the scientist that the development of the principle of the Ego falls, the method 52 WHAT IS THOUGHT? of that development cannot be the physical method of the latter, but can only be the metaphysical method of the former. And yet the Ego as Ego is a principle in rerum natura. It is the ratio of the I and the Me in the Ego that is Thought, and it is Thought that is the foison of the universe. Thought is the business proper of self-consciousness, and the ratio between the I and the Me of self -consciousness it is that that is the bite of the Ego. I as I is the subject, and Me as Me is the object ; but both are identically the same. This, then, is the primitive relation the unit of what is : the unit of what it is to think ; and the unit of what it is to be. But, plainly, this unit, or the whole idea of this unit, is not only a notion in its identity, but it is a judgment in its difference, nay, more, it is a syllogism in its totality, the reflexion (or reflection) of the Me back again into the I, with restoration of the whole, of the All that is. And what is this but Logic ? The conjunct act of Simple Apprehension, Judgment, and Eeason ! And with this before us we may well repeat here from the " I Am That I Am." " Yea, I am one ; But my own ratio fills me, which, secerned Apart from me, is no more me, but mine . . . One absolute proportion is the whole, One sole relation . . . I Am, I Am, I Am That I Am . . . Be thou but Me . . . Enjoy Thou me, and let my will be thine alone ; The one is many, and the many one. Herein is peace divine and the great life That is the all." 2. THE "Voics" The whole will be found singularly in place here, and singularly illustrative. That of the "Voice," too, is THE "VOICE" 53 excellently illustrative. The conception, I have said, " sounds better in German " ; and I have ventured to express myself in a German word or two : " Was ist, ist eine Stimme," etc. What is, is a Voice ; abstract, however, this voice is only in itself; but it must also be for itself or as itself ; and to be for itself or as itself, it must distinguish itself; and that is, give itself, as constitutive of it, its native series and system of notes." Now, that is exactly as the Ego with its movement into a series and system of notes of its own, which are existence as existence, which are the universe. And here it suggests itself to consider what is the precise nature of that very peculiar relation which obtains between the voice and its register, or between the Ego and its so-called system of notes. When we see smoke we surmise fire ; and we know that the German Herbart has generalised as much as this into the sentence : So much Schein (appearance), so much Seyn (reality); at the same time that there is the common brocard, de non apparentibus et de non existentibus, eadem est ratio. And there can be no conclusion in the circumstances but that whatever is must also seem : whatever is must double over or out. That is just what we see in the case of the voice and its notes, or in the case of the Ego and its notes. Here it is the voice, the Ego, that is the Seyn, Being ; while, in either case, the notes are but the shine, the show, the seeming. The Germans call this world the Erschcinung, the Appearance, and that comes to the same thing. If we think of it, the notes of the voice are but individual and finite ; and as but transitory, they perish and pass. On the other hand, in such position the voice itself can be figured as infinite : it can go on piping for ever an actual infinitude of notes. The Seyn, then, the foing, that which is, is always the reality ; 'whereas the shine, the show, manifest as it may, and 54 WHAT IS THOUGHT? manifest what it may, is but temporary appearance. No doubt, it manifests ; no doubt, it always manifests. But even so, it is always only secondary and never prime. Let it manifest what it may, it itself (the shine} is but vicarious, and can never be anything else than vicarious. Now, that is a very curious duplication ; and it is a very curious relation that lies between the sides of it. For what is the effect of the one, and what does the other involve ? The effect is this, and what is involved is this that the manifestation, the appearance, the shine, as always only secondary and vicarious, is also always only so far false \ It is always only for another ; it is never for itself: it itself is never the it the it that, as manifested, or not manifested, is alone the it con- cerned, the truth, the reality the truth that is, the reality that is. Another reflexion of the situation is this, that concerns the German word Erscheinung. This word, in ordinary usage, as we have just seen, means simply the world without, simply what is in evidence, in appearance around us, this word, in which, according to the genius of the language, the first part of it, the Er, has the force of denoting that what is in hand is the effecting, the making good of something through the second part of it, the scheinung, namely, this word, I say, so regarded, can only represent a shining through of the it, of the it that is, the truth that is, the reality that is ; and that being so, it itself (the shine) can be no it, no truth, no reality, but only what is no more than representative, figurative, or even, it may be, merely indicative of the it, the truth, the reality. With this commentary, our Erscheinung, then, is but a shine or show from ; and so the from, as only pointing to what shines through, is alone substantial. CHAPTEK VI FURTHER ILLUSTRATION WHAT we have brought forward from the Secret of Hegel forms a considerable body of evidence, and it applies to the year 1864 (I presented a friend with an "early copy " of the book on the Christmas Day of that year). One other quotation I should like to add as from a paragraph that must have been one of the last written then. It is from p. xlvi of the Preface, and runs thus : " He has been enabled, through Kant, to perceive that the condi- tions of a concrete, and of every concrete, are two opposites : in other words, he has come to see that there exists no concrete which consists not of two antagonistic characters, where, at the same time, strangely somehow, the one is not only through the other, but actually is this other." We have seen this very accurately illustrated by the two moments of Quantity. Continuity is impossible without Discretion Continuity implies Discretion Continuity, so far, is Discretion : but, equally again, Discretion is impossible without Continuity Discretion implies Continuity Discretion, so far, is Continuity. Nor is it otherwise with notion and moments in the case of any concrete. Take the abstractest concrete of all simply Genesis simply Becoming. Its moments it itself being pure, pure form that is are pure being and pure nothing. And what are they ? Pure being is the abstraction from every particular being that ever was, is, 55 56 WHAT 18 THOUGHT? or can be ; and what else is pure nothing ? Pure nothing, equally with pure being, is the abstraction from every particular being that ever was, is, or can be ; and these, the first abstractions, the first either-or, are the moments of the first concrete notion. The German philosopher, then, was not, after all, so very much of a fool when his Anna virumque cano and his Mrjviv aei&e 6ed screaked out, raucous in prose, Seyn und Mchts ist dasselbe ! Just think of our own I-Me, at once pure subject and pure object, or at once pure affirmative and pure negative ! Ay, that is the first, and the font, and the source of all ! And what is the / subject as negating into itself the Me object what is that but the " negation of the negation," which, as I think I may take it for granted, has proved but perplexingly a somewhat familiar acquaintance of the most of us ? Nay, what is the answer to the one great problem with which the whole business so solemnly set out what is the reply to the single question which from the lips of Kant inaugurated the whole movement ? " The problem proper of pure reason," says Kant, in one of his earliest pages, " is comprised in the question : How are syn- thetic judgments a priori possible ? " Now, then, the answer to this problem, the reply to this question, is the single word Ego, I-Me ! Ego is the Apprehension that takes up ; Ego is the Judgment that is accurate and parts into an either-or ; Ego is the Eeason that, yet more accurate, resumes both into one. The / that sub- sumes the Me is Thought : the Me that rises into the / is Eeligion. The dividing line between the / and the Me is the contradiction that creates the universe : the uniting line between the / and the Me is the solution that resolves the all of things back again into the sole substance that is, and the sole subject that is, and the sole person that is God, in whom (the infinite) we (the finite) FURTHER ILLUSTRATION 57 live, and move, and have our being, but, finite-infinite, are subjects and persons too the droplets in the drop, the Many in the One. And from this we see that, had Kant and Hegel been but clearer or braver in regard to the Ego, both might have placed their philosophies in such grand, rich focus of unity, and power, and light as would have left but small possibility in advance for complaint of darkness, or difficulty, or unintelligibleness. If, then, it was in reference to Fichte that there was that first word from the Secret of Hegel about " a Fulcrum being found in the nature of self-consciousness," we see now that, as regards Kant and Hegel, what a gain it might have been for the philosophies of both had that " fulcrum " been but in the mind and in the will of either. Indeed, as has been already indicated, if we will but pause upon it, and patiently endeavour to exhaust the implication of it (the Ego), it may be that we shall not a little astonish our own selves in the general reference to philosophy at all in short ! If neither a matter as to the lonians, nor a number as to the Pytha- goreans, it (this of the Ego) is still, as to the one, an original unit, and it is still, as to the other, a primitive and prescriptive measure. As to the Eleatics, too, it is what for them alone was, and alone was one. It never began, neither in what was nor in what was not. It always was, and never was not. Through all becoming, in all becoming, it alone is ; and yet, like becoming itself, it is not one but two, or, more properly, it is a one in two, a duplicity in unity. That is the life of the " I," the being and soul of the " I." The " I " cannot say itself once ; it must repeat itself, it must say itself twice. Simply to be, it must double itself, divide itself, and set itself against itself. It unites itself only in that it dis- unites itself. It is Empedoclean love and hate, and strife and peace at once. Anaxagoras said it, and named 58 WHAT IS THOUGHT? it ; and had Leucippus and Democritus but thought of it, they would have found it their plenum and their vacuum, their affirmative and their negative at once, nor less their primitive atom that was independent of shape, place, position. Curious ! That it was that the Sophists played with ; and it was with that, again, that Socrates was serious. It was the Idea of Plato surely very literally in its express ravrov and Qdrepov, too. And, as for Aristotle, self-consciousness, the Ego, can be very readily seen to come up to and realise the V\TJ and the SiW/u?, the /jLop(j)r} and the evepyeia, the