All beyond is analytical, proceeding according to the principle of contradiction.

4. Kant therefore gives an entirely false account of the procedure of the Intelligence in the sciences. According to this philosopher, in all the sciences, the Intelligence begins with synthetical judgments, judgments in which the predicate lies wholly out of the subject. From this predicate as subject, the next step is to another predicate lying in a similar manner without that, and so on, each step being like the first, purely synthetical. If this were the case, we should have, in no science whatever, anything like demonstration, for this, in all instances, rests upon the principle of contradiction exclusively. In other words, all demonstrative sciences are analytical, and not synthetical, except, as shown above, in their first a priori principles. The scientific procedure, then, is exactly the reverse of what Kant represents it. Instead of going from judgment to judgment synthetically, the Intelligence, after the first principles have been obtained synthetically, falls back upon the principles thus obtained, and in their light evolves, by a process exclusively analytical, the properties and relations of the subjects of investigation.

PROGRESS OF TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY SINCE THE TIME

OF KANT.

Since the era of Kant philosophers of the Transcendental school have taken for granted the fundamental principles of his philosophy, to wit, that all ideas and principles of Reason are wholly invalid, in respect to things in themselves, that is in respect to realities material or mental. They are of great use, as prior principles by which the procedure of the Intelligence may be explained. If, on the other hand, we apply them beyond this, and suppose them to have any validity whatever from things in themselves, we fundamentally err.

Now the efforts of philosophers of the Transcendental school have been strenuously directed to the formation of a system of mental science, in strict conformity to this assumption. The difficulty perpetually encountered has been the apparent impossibility of constructing a system which should not fundamentally involve the very principles, the validity of which the philosophy itself denies. Keeping this fact in view, we shall be able to explain distinctly the progress of this philosophy from Kant to the wild forms which it has recently assumed in Europe and this country.

System of Kant.

The system of Kant admitted and affirmed the existence of two unknown and unknowable realities, realities existing neither in time nor space, and which are neither substance nor attribute; realities, denominated noumena, to wit, the subject which thinks, and the object which, in some undefined and inconceivable manner, affects the subject and sets the machinery of thought in motion. The Intelligence thus brought into action, then, by virtue of its own laws, forms to itself a universe, as described in preceding chapters; the universe thus formed having no correspondence whatever to the realities, material and mental, which the Intelligence postulates as constituting it. Such is the system of Kant.

System of Fichte.

But

Fichte followed Kant as one of the great lights in philosophy. Adopting the fundamental principle of his master, the principle above stated, pertaining to the invalidity of all ideas of Reason, and consequently of all affirmations of the Intelligence in reference to realities, with a profound analysis he examined the principles of Kant, and found that one side at least of his system ran upon a line the reality of which his philosophy denied, and that that philosophy could not be true, if that principle was granted as real. Kant maintained that the machinery of thought could not be set in motion without the action of some external cause upon the thinking power to "awaken the faculty of cognition into exercise." this, as Fichte saw, admitted the validity of one principle of Reason for things in themselves, to wit, the idea of cause and effect. If the validity of this idea was to be admitted, that of all others, to wit, those of body and space, succession and time, phenomena and substance, must be admitted also; these last having precisely the same claims to validity, for things in themselves, that the former has. Thus we should have a system of realism, instead of idealism. Fichte, to escape this difficulty, denied the existence of the object altogether. All knowledge, according to him, is reduced to one proposition, and consists of the different forms in which this idea or proposition is evolved. The proposition is this: I AM I. Consciousness has two spheres, the exterior and the interior. A certain phenomenon appears. The interior Consciousness postulates it as the phenomenon of the subject I.

Here is the first development of the proposition, I am I. Another phenomenon appears. The exterior Consciousness postulates that as the phenomenon of something exterior to the I. The same I which was before assumed as the subject of the interior phenomenon, is now projected as the subject of the exterior. Thus we have another development of the proposition, I am I. In such a procedure we gain the conception of the Me and the Not-me. Thus the varied universe is generated. All is ideal. All the repetition of one proposition, I am I. The following amusing caricature of this system, a system which for a long period held almost absolute sway over the philosophic mind of Germany, Coleridge acknowledges correctly states its principles:

Eu! Die vices gerens, ipse Divus,

(Speak English, Friend!) the God Imperativus,
Here on this market-cross aloud I cry:

I, I, I! I, itself, I!

The form and the substance, the what and the why,
The when and the where, and the low and the high,
The inside and outside, the earth and the sky,

I, you, her and he, you and I,

All souls and all bodies are I, itself, I!

All I, itself, I!

(Fools, a truce with this startling!)
All my I! all my I!

He's a heretic dog who but adds, Betty Martin !
Thus cried the God with high imperial tone;
In robe of stiffest state, that scoffed at beauty,
A pronoun-verb imperative he shone-
The substantive and plural-singular grown,
He thus spake on! Behold in I alone
(For ethics boast a syntax of their own)
Or if in ye, yet as I doth depute ye,
In O! I, you, the vocative of duty!

I, of the world's whole Lexicon the root

Of the whole universe of touch, sound, sight,

The genitive and ablative to boot;

The accusative of wrong, the nominative of right,

And in all cases the case absolute!

Self-construed, I all other moods decline:

Imperative, from nothing we derive us;
Yet as a super-postulate of mine,
Unconstrued antecedence I assign

To X, Y, Z, the God infinitivus!

Yes, according to this sublime philosophy, all things visible and invisible, finite and infinite, subjective and objective, material and spiritual, the earth, the air, moon and stars, time, place, substance, cause, God, liberty, and immortality,

are nothing but the I am I subjectized and objectized, unified and reduplicated, consolidated and sublimated, materialized and spiritualized, limited into the finite, and expanded into the infinite; first a subject, then an object; now cause, and then effect; now a creature trembling in the presence of the Eternal One; then that very Eternal One transformed into the moral order of the universe. Yet Fichte was a great philosopher, else he could never have systematized such absurdities; and Germany must have been fruitful of great philosophers, else the nation never could have digested such absurdities.

System of Schelling.

The system of Fichte had its day, and was then superseded by one in more complete harmony with the principle above named, the system of Schelling. The philosopher last named was at first a warm disciple of the former, and defended his opinions against the objections of the followers of Kant. At length he began to discover insuperable difficulties in the system of his master, as the latter had done in that of Kant. Fichte denied the reality of the infinite, except as the moral order of the universe, that is, of the developments of the I am I. His system also admitted the reality of a multitude of I's. Schelling was struck with difficulties like the following, fundamentally involved in this system:

1. In admitting the reality of a multitude of distinct existences, it would be difficult to deny the validity of the idea of time, at least as applicable to things in themselves. For there must be a real coetaneousness or succession in the existence of things thus existing, whatever they may be. This would establish time as a reality in itself. As a consequence, the same must be admitted of space, substance, cause, &c. But the validity of all these ideas for things in themselves, is denied by the philosophy assumed on all hands as true. Therefore, no such separate existences are to be admitted as real.

2. Fichte deduces the object from the subject. It would be just as philosophical to deduce the subject from the object.

3. He also deduced the infinite from the finite, a most unphilosophical procedure; it being just as philosophical, and more so, to deduce the finite from the infinite.

While, therefore, Schelling rejected the system of his

master, he retained the fundamental elements of his system, to wit, that all knowledge is but the repetition, in different forms, of one and the same intuition, the I AM, as he chooses to denominate it, an assumption which Coleridge appears to have adopted from Schelling, or at least, he held it in common with that philosopher. Now as Fichte, to escape difficulties which he met in the system of Kant, threw away the object, leaving the subject mind as the only reality, so Schelling, to escape similar difficulties inherent in the system of his master, rejected all subjects but one, the Infinite and Absolute. The Infinite and Absolute is the only reality. All individualities are merely apparent, and only different forms in which the Infinite and Absolute manifests itself. Being and knowing are identical. The subject which knows, and the object known, are not diverse the one from the other, but one and the same. Assuming the Infinite and Absolute as the only reality, the system of knowledge, according to Schelling, proceeds in perfect conformity to the principles of his predecessor. In the Infinite and Absolute two opposite forces, each infinite and indestructible, exist, one tending to expand infinitely, and the other seeking to know itself in this infinity. The result of these two forces interpenetrating each other, each being infinite and indestructible, is a finite generation. Hence individualities finite, and limited, arise. These individualities are not separate existences, but only forms in which the Infinite and Absolute develops itself. In the finite the same contradiction, the same conflict of opposing forces, is repeated-the finite seeking to expand itself, and to know itself in this expansion. In this act of selfconsciousness, the finite is present to itself as subject and object. The object is the external creation. The subject is the being who knows this creation. Yet the subject and object are not two, but one and the same. Neither is distinct from the Infinite and Absolute, but only a form in which the postulate I am in the Infinite is repeated. The I in the Finite and Infinite, in order to know itself, must see itself in the act of perceiving an object. For how can we know what perception is, that is, know ourselves as percipients, only by knowing ourselves in the act of perceiving something, that is, some object? But the object known cannot be different from the subject which knows, since being and knowing are correlative, and must meet in the same subject. The subject, then, knows itself by seeing itself as its own