Biographia Literaria
all, itself included, may become an object. It must therefore be an ACT;
for every object is, as an object, dead, fixed, incapable in itself of
any action, and necessarily finite. Again the spirit (originally
the identity of object and subject) must in some sense dissolve this
identity, in order to be conscious of it; fit alter et idem. But
this implies an act, and it follows therefore that intelligence
or self-consciousness is impossible, except by and in a will. The
self-conscious spirit therefore is a will; and freedom must be assumed
as a ground of philosophy, and can never be deduced from it.
THESIS VIII
Whatever in its origin is objective, is likewise as such necessarily
finite. Therefore, since the spirit is not originally an object, and
as the subject exists in antithesis to an object, the spirit cannot
originally be finite. But neither can it be a subject without becoming
an object, and, as it is originally the identity of both, it can be
conceived neither as infinite nor finite exclusively, but as the most
original union of both. In the existence, in the reconciling, and the
recurrence of this contradiction consists the process and mystery of
production and life.
THESIS IX
This principium commune essendi et cognoscendi, as subsisting in a WILL,
or primary ACT of self-duplication, is the mediate or indirect principle
of every science; but it is the immediate and direct principle of the
ultimate science alone, i.e. of transcendental philosophy alone. For it
must be remembered, that all these Theses refer solely to one of the
two Polar Sciences, namely, to that which commences with, and rigidly
confines itself within, the subjective, leaving the objective (as far
as it is exclusively objective) to natural philosophy, which is its
opposite pole. In its very idea therefore as a systematic knowledge of
our collective KNOWING, (scientia scientiae) it involves the necessity
of some one highest principle of knowing, as at once the source and
accompanying form in all particular acts of intellect and perception.
This, it has been shown, can be found only in the act and evolution of
self-consciousness. We are not investigating an absolute principium
essendi; for then, I admit, many valid objections might be started
against our theory; but an absolute principium cognoscendi. The result
of both the sciences, or their equatorial point, would be the principle
of a total and undivided philosophy, as, for prudential reasons, I
have chosen to anticipate in the Scholium to Thesis VI and the note
subjoined. In other words, philosophy would pass into religion, and
religion become inclusive of philosophy. We begin with the I KNOW
MYSELF, in order to end with the absolute I AM. We proceed from the
SELF, in order to lose and find all self in GOD.
THESIS X
The transcendental philosopher does not inquire, what ultimate ground of
our knowledge there may lie out of our knowing, but what is the last in
our knowing itself, beyond which we cannot pass. The principle of our
knowing is sought within the sphere of our knowing. It must be some
thing therefore, which can itself be known. It is asserted only, that
the act of self-consciousness is for us the source and principle of
all our possible knowledge. Whether abstracted from us there exists any
thing higher and beyond this primary self-knowing, which is for us the
form of all our knowing must be decided by the result.
That the self-consciousness is the fixed point, to which for us all is
mortised and annexed, needs no further proof. But that the
self-consciousness may be the modification of a higher form of being,
perhaps of a higher consciousness, and this again of a yet higher, and
so on in an infinite regressus; in short, that self-consciousness may
be itself something explicable into something, which must lie beyond
the possibility of our knowledge, because the whole synthesis of our
intelligence is first formed in and through the self-consciousness,
does not at all concern us as transcendental philosophers. For to us,
self-consciousness is not a kind of being, but a kind of knowing, and
that too the highest and farthest that exists for us. It may however be
shown, and has in part already been shown earlier, that even when the
Objective is assumed as the first, we yet can never pass beyond the
principle of self-consciousness. Should we attempt it, we must be
driven back from ground to ground, each of which would cease to be a
ground the moment we pressed on it. We must be whirled down the gulf of
an infinite series. But this would make our reason baffle the end and
purpose of all reason, namely, unity and system. Or we must break off
the series arbitrarily, and affirm an absolute something that is in and
of itself at once cause and effect (causa sui), subject and object, or
rather the absolute identity of both. But as this is inconceivable,
except in a self-consciousness, it follows, that even as natural
philosophers we must arrive at the same principle from which as
transcendental philosophers we set out; that is, in a
self-consciousness in which the principium essendi does not stand to
the principlum cognoscende in the relation of cause to effect, but both
the one and the other are co-inherent and identical. Thus the true
system of natural philosophy places the sole reality of things in an
ABSOLUTE, which is at once causa sui et effectus, pataer autopator,
uios heautou--in the absolute identity of subject and object, which it
calls nature, and which in its highest power is nothing else than
self-conscious will or intelligence. In this sense the position of
Malebranche, that we see all things in God, is a strict philosophical
truth; and equally true is the assertion of Hobbes, of Hartley, and of
their masters in ancient Greece, that all real knowledge supposes a
prior sensation. For sensation itself is but vision nascent, not the
cause of intelligence, but intelligence itself revealed as an earlier
power in the process of self-construction.
Makar, ilathi moi;
Pater, ilathi moi
Ei para kosmon,
Ei para moiran
Ton son ethigon!
Bearing then this in mind, that intelligence is a self-development, not
a quality supervening to a substance, we may abstract from all degree,
and for the purpose of philosophic construction reduce it to kind, under
the idea of an indestructible power with two opposite and counteracting
forces, which by a metaphor borrowed from astronomy, we may call the
centrifugal and centripetal forces. The intelligence in the one tends to
objectize itself, and in the other to know itself in the object. It
will be hereafter my business to construct by a series of intuitions
the progressive schemes, that must follow from such a power with such
forces, till I arrive at the fulness of the human intelligence. For
my present purpose, I assume such a power as my principle, in order to
deduce from it a faculty, the generation, agency, and application of
which form the contents of the ensuing chapter.
In a preceding page I have justified the use of technical terms in
philosophy, whenever they tend to preclude confusion of thought, and
when they assist the memory by the exclusive singleness of their meaning
more than they may, for a short time, bewilder the attention by their
strangeness. I trust, that I have not extended this privilege beyond
the grounds on which I have claimed it; namely, the conveniency of the
scholastic phrase to distinguish the kind from all degrees, or rather
to express the kind with the abstraction of degree, as for instance
multeity instead of multitude; or secondly, for the sake of
correspondence in sound in interdependent or antithetical terms, as
subject and object; or lastly, to avoid the wearying recurrence of
circumlocutions and definitions. Thus I shall venture to use potence,
in order to express a specific degree of a power, in imitation of the
Algebraists. I have even hazarded the new verb potenziate, with its
derivatives, in order to express the combination or transfer of powers.
It is with new or unusual terms, as with privileges in courts of justice
or legislature; there can be no legitimate privilege, where there
already exists a positive law adequate to the purpose; and when there is
no law in existence, the privilege is to be justified by its accordance
with the end, or final cause, of all law. Unusual and new-coined
words are doubtless an evil; but vagueness, confusion, and imperfect
conveyance of our thoughts, are a far greater. Every system, which is
under the necessity of using terms not familiarized by the metaphysics
in fashion, will be described as written in an unintelligible style, and
the author must expect the charge of having substituted learned jargon
for clear conception; while, according to the creed of our modern
philosophers, nothing is deemed a clear conception, but what is
representable by a distinct image. Thus the conceivable is reduced
within the bounds of the picturable. Hinc patet, qui fiat, ut cum
irrepraesentabile et impossibile vulgo ejusdem significatus habeantur,
conceptus tam continui, quam infiniti, a plurimis rejiciantur, quippe
quorum, secundum leges cognitionis intuitivae, repraesentatio est
impossibilis. Quanquam autem harum e non paucis scholis explosarum
notionum, praesertim prioris, causam hic non gero, maximi tamen
momendi erit monuisse. gravissimo illos errore labi, qui tam perverse
argumentandi ratione utuntur. Quicquid enim repugnat legibus intellectus
et rationis, utique est impossibile; quod autem, cum rationis purae
sit objectum, legibus cognitionis intuitivae tantummodo non subest, non
item. Nam hic dissensus inter facultatem sensitivam et intellectualem,
(quarum indolem mox exponam,) nihil indigitat, nisi, quas mens ab
intellectu acceptas fert ideas abstractas, illas in concreto exsequi
et in intuitus commutare saepenumero non posse. Haec autem reluctantia
subjectiva mentitur, ut plurimum, repugnantiam aliquam objectivam, et
incautos facile fallit, limitibus, quibus mens humana circumscribitur,
pro iis habitis, quibus ipsa rerum essentia continetur. [54]
Critics, who are most ready to bring this charge of pedantry and
unintelligibility, are the most apt to overlook the important
fact, that, besides the language of words, there is a language of
spirits--(sermo interior)--and that the former is only the vehicle of
the latter. Consequently their assurance, that they do not understand
the philosophic writer, instead of proving any thing against the
philosophy, may furnish an equal, and (caeteris paribus) even a stronger
presumption against their own philosophic talent.
Great indeed are the obstacles which an English metaphysician has to
encounter. Amongst his most respectable and intelligent judges, there
will be many who have devoted their attention exclusively to the
concerns and interests of human life, and who bring with them to
the perusal of a philosophic system an habitual aversion to all
speculations, the utility and application of which are not evident
and immediate. To these I would in the first instance merely oppose an
authority, which they themselves hold venerable, that of Lord Bacon: non
inutiles Scientiae existimandae sunt, quarum in se nullus est usus, si
ingenia acuant et ordinent.
There are others, whose prejudices are still more formidable, inasmuch
as they are grounded in their moral feelings and religious principles,
which had been alarmed and shocked by the impious and pernicious tenets
defended by Hume, Priestley, and the French fatalists or necessitarians;
some of whom had perverted metaphysical reasonings to the denial of the
mysteries and indeed of all the peculiar doctrines of Christianity;
and others even to the subversion of all distinction between right