ARTICLE IV.

THE TEUTONIC METAPHYSICS, OR MODERN TRANSCEN

DENTALISM.

By C. E. STOWE, D. D., Professor of Bibl. Lit., Lane Sem., Cincinnati.

FOR more than a quarter of a century past, the attention of the literary world has been turned very strongly toward Germany. The freshness, the boldness, and the exuberance of the German literature; the copiousness, the strength, and the flexibility of that majestic language; the literary treasures of the German universities, and the astounding labors of the German professors, have been well calculated to attract general notice. In some branches of literature and science, the Germans certainly have excelled all other nations; while in others, if I read them aright, they have made very great pretensions with quite mean results. As in sailing along the New England coast, you sometimes seem to approach a magnificent country, variegated with every beauty of mountain and vale, which, as you come nearer, proves to be a pile of illuminated fog; so many of the products of the German intellect, which, viewed at a distance, show rich and splendid, on closer inspection are found to be poor and commonplace. When set forth in the imposing vocabulary of the German language, they sound wonderfully weighty, but translate them into homely English, and they strike the ear like flat non

sense.

In classical learning, in translations, in all the departments of history, in philology, in some branches of theology, in certain forms of fictions and poetry, in literary criticism, the German writers are unsurpassed, unrivalled-but on some other topics, it seems to me, they have vastly more credit than belongs to them, and that their writings have been admired, praised, and imitated without much discrimination, and to the manifest injury of many young and ardent minds. I propose,

therefore, to devote a little time, in this article, to the examination of the Teutonic Metaphysics, or the Philosophical Theories of Kant and Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, the four great pillars of the Modern Transcendentalism. The term transcendental, in its strict technical sense, applies only to the philosophy of Kant; but I here take the word according to popular usage, and apply it to the whole range of German intellectual philosophy.

The metaphysics of Locke, under various modifications, have prevailed over English and French mind, the most effective mind in the civilized world, for more than a century; a long period, certainly, in an active and thinking age, for any one system of mental science to maintain its dominion. This style of philosophizing did not long retain its ascendency among the Germanic nations, but was there entirely overthrown more than sixty years ago: and for about twenty-five years past, there has been a gradual but certain undermining of its influence in France, England, and the United States. Almost all the ardent, youthful, investigating mind in these countries, now feels that the system of Locke, in all its modifications, is meagre, unspiritual, and unsatisfying, and is anxiously looking for something better.

On the continent of Europe the system of Locke is generally known by the name of sensualism, while that which supplanted it has usually been called the critical philosophy, and the general system transcendentalism or idealism. This in Europe has exerted so wide-spread an influence, especially on theology, and is so obviously now doing the same in France, England, and the United States, that some account of it, though perhaps a little of the driest, cannot be unacceptable to the readers of the Repository.

All investigation of this Teutonic philosophy is sometimes opposed in the outset by an argument in terrorem. "Look (it is said) at the neologism, the unbelief, the irreligion it has produced in Germany." But if this be a good argument against the study of Kant, it is an argument a fortiori against the study of Locke; for it is notorious that Locke's philosophy is

the foundation on which the French atheists built their whole structure of extravagance and wickedness-and every one, I suppose, will admit that German rationalism is a far more devout and respectable adversary than French atheism. It is true that Locke was neither an unbeliever nor an atheist; and it is equally true that Kant was neither a theological neologist nor a scoffer at religion. The principles of both these philosophers were seized upon by others, perverted and driven to results which the philosophers themselves never dreamed of, and would not have sanctioned. In this respect certainly there is no very great difference between them.

It is also said "that the philosophy of Locke and his Scotch successors is very plain and simple, while that of Kant and his German followers is very obscure if not wholly unintelligible." There may be some truth in this, and yet all the praise of simplicity and clearness, and all the blame of obscurity and unintelligibleness may not rest precisely where the objection places it. It is easy to follow a man who walks very slow, and goes but a short distance; but when a man walks very fast, and goes a great way, it is not always so easy to keep in sight of him. The German philosophy professes to do a great deal more than the Scotch, to investigate further, to penetrate much deeper, and of course it ought to require more pains and study to comprehend it. At least, let us not judge without investigation; let us not rashly decide that to be mere senseless jargon in which so many intelligent, able, and most learned men think they discover most important and profound truths.

I cannot pretend, within the limits assigned me, to give even an outline of this philosophy, but only a brief sketch of its history and changes. And I must say further, that these systems of German philosophy are so elaborate, that they go into investigations to which we are so little accustomed, that they imply a process of mental training so entirely unlike ours, and are withal expressed in a language so peculiar, that any attempt to give in English a sketch of them, in a popular form, must, from the very necesssity of the case, be imperfect

and unsatisfactory. This, I think, is stating the case as fairly as possible for the Germans, and I am sure I have no disposition to take any unfair advantage.

SYSTEM OF KANT.

All our knowledge (Locke is understood to say) is derived from sensation or from reflection. By the former we are made conscious of things external, by the latter we are made conscious of things internal, or of the operation of our own minds; the amount of which doctrine seems to be, that we can know nothing except that of which we are immediately conscious.

Berkeley, taking for granted the truth of Locke's doctrine, showed that there could be no such thing as matter or the external world, or at least that we can have no evidence of the existence of any such thing. For, by our senses we are made conscious of sensations only, and not of matter itself, and sensations are affections of mind. From Aristotle to Locke, it had been asserted that our sensations are copies of the real objects which produce them. Berkeley proved that a sensation, that is, an affection of mind, can never be a copy of any thing which does not resemble mind, can never be a copy of

matter.

Hume probed the point still further. According to him, we are not more conscious of mind in itself than we are of matter in itself. All that we are immediately conscious of is -ideas and impressions; consequently nothing but ideas and impressions exist, or rather nothing else can be known to exist. Following up this train of reasoning, Hume proceeds to inquire, Whence is our notion of cause derived? Is it from sensation? Surely not, for the senses show only that the two events which we call cause and effect, follow each other, and never that they are necessarily connected. Is it then from reflection? But we reflect only on our sensations, and as these do not contain the notion of cause, so no reflection can discover it in them. Finding, therefore, that these

sources of our knowledge, which he with Locke believed to be the only ones, afford no clue to that firm belief which mankind have in the notion of cause, he declared it to be a mere idea, a habit of the mind acquired by seeing two events always succeed each other in the same order.

This of course, pushed away all the evidences of religion, natural and revealed. Hume's system was successfully opposed by Dr. Reid, Dr. Beattie, Dugald Stewart, and others.'

It was these speculations of Hume, on the origin of our idea of cause, that first started Kant, and set him on those metaphysical inquiries which have produced such a revolution in intellectual philosophy, and given so much celebrity to his own rather odd-sounding name. Before we give an account of his system, we must give a brief history of the man.

IMMANUEL KANT, the son of an honest, intelligent harnessmaker, was born in Königsburg, Prussia, in April, 1725, and in this city he lived to be eighty years old, scarcely ever going without its walls, and having never in his life been more than thirty miles distant from his birth-place. His mother was a woman of extraordinary talent and piety. Immanuel, though very poor, contrived with her help to get a university education in his native city, and soon distinguished himself by superior scholarship. He made marked progress in metaphysics, but at that time mathematics and astronomy were his favorite studies. In 1755, when only twenty-one years old, he published an astronomical treatise, in which he clearly pointed out the existence of the planet afterwards called Georgium Sidus, the supposed discovery of which has since given such celebrity to the name of Dr. Herschell. This was twenty-seven years before Herschell's discovery, and if the planet ought to bear the name of its first discoverer, it should be called Kant, and not Herschell. This will be done, I suppose, when America is named Columbia. Kant became a professor in the university of Königsburg, and his lectures were much

1 See For. Quart. Review, vol. i. p. 360-65.