FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS OF PHILOSOPHY. 617 



ADDITIONAL NOTE TO TWO MEMOIES "ON THE FUNDAMENTAL 

 ANTITHESIS OF PHILOSOPHY." 



Of certain Modern Systems of Philosophy. 



I AM desirous of adding, as a note to this and the preceding Memoir, some very brief remarlis 

 relative to certain philosophical systems which have been much spoken of in modern times, especially 

 those of the celebrated German philosophers, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. 



Every system of pliilosophy offers to us a special and characteristic mode of criticizing preceding 

 systems : and since every new system aspires to be true, it includes that which was true in the 

 preceding systems, and is therefore able to point out where the true part of each is. The doctrine 

 which I have endeavoured to explain in the two preceding Memoirs is, that there is a Fundamental 

 Antithesis of two elements, of which the union is involved in all knowledge, and of which the 

 separation is the task of all philosophy. This doctrine naturally directs us to consider how far 

 each preceding system of philosophy has performed this task ; and the survey of such systems from 

 this point of view, may enable us to characterize them by a few sentences, at least so far as they 

 regard one leading point of such systems, the account which they give of the nature and foundations 

 of human knowledge. 



The doctrine of the Fundamental Antithesis, which I have endeavoured to expound in the 

 above Memoirs, and in other places, is briefly this : 



That in every act of knowledge (I) tliere are two opposite elements iv/tich we may call Ideas 

 and Perceptions ; but of which the opposition appears in various other antitheses ; as Thoughts 

 and Things, Theories a?id Facts, Necessary Truths and Experiential Truths ; and the li/ce : (2) that 

 our knowledge derives from the former of these elements, namely our Ideas, its form and character 

 as knowledge, our Ideas of space and time being the necessary forms, for instance, of our geome- 

 trical and arithmetical knowledge ,■ (3) and in like manner, all our other knowledge involving a 

 developement of the ideal conditions of knowledge existing in our minds : (4) Imt that though ideas 

 and perceptions are thus separate elements in our philosophy, they cannot, in fact, be distinguished 

 and separated, but are different aspects of the same thing ; (5) that the only way in which we can 

 approach to truth is by gradually and successively, in one instance after anotlier, advancing from 

 the perception to the idea ; from the fact to the theory ; from the apprehension of truths as 

 actual to the apprehension of them as necessary. (6) This successive and various progress from 

 fact to tlieory constitutes the history of science ; (7) and tliis progress, though always leading us 

 nearer to that central unity of which both tlie idea and the fact are emanati<ms, can never lead us 

 to that poitit, nor to any measurable proximity to it, or definite comprehension of its place and 

 nature. 



Now the doctrine of the Fundamental Antithesis being thus stated, the successive sentences 

 of the statement contain the successive steps of German philosophy, as it has appeared in the 

 series of great authors whom I have named. 



Ideas, and Perceptions or Sensations, being regarded as the two elements of oin- knowledge, 

 Locke, or at least the successors of I^ocke, had rejected the former element, Ideas, and professed to 

 resolve all our knowledge into Sensation. After tliis philosophy had prevailed for a lime, Kant 

 exposed, to the entire conviction of the great body of German speculators, the untenable nature of 

 this account of our knowledge. He taught (one of the first sentences of the above statement) that 

 (2) Our laiowledge derives from our Metis its form and charac/er as IcnowU'dgc ; our Ideas of 

 space and time being, for instance, the necessary forms of our geometriral and arithmetical 

 knowledge. Fichte carried still further this view of oiir knowledge, as derived from our Ideas, or 



