FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS OF PHILOSOPHY. 619 



this view into detail by conjecture, by a sort of divination, with little or no attention to the histori- 

 cal progress and actual condition of knowledge, (and such are those which have been made by the 

 philosophers whom I have mentioned,) have led to arbitrary and baseless views of almost every 

 branch of knowledge. Such oppositions and differences as are found to exist in nature, are assumed 

 as the representatives of the elements of necessary antitheses, in a manner in which scientific truth 

 and inductive reasoning are altogether slighted. Thus, this peculiar and necessary antithetical 

 character is assumed to be displayed in attraction and repulsion, in centripetal and centrifugal forces, 

 in a supposed positive and negative electricity, in a supposed positive and negative magnetism ; in 

 still more doubtful positive and negative elements of light and heat ; in the different elements of the 

 atmosphere which are, quite groundlessly, assumed to have a peculiar antithetical character : in 

 animal and vegetable life : in the two sexes : in gravity and light. These and many others, are 

 given by Schelling, as instances of the radical opposition of forces and elements which necessarily 

 pervades all nature. I conceive that the heterogeneous and erroneous principles involved in these 

 views of the material world show us how unsafe and misleading is the philosophical assumption on 

 which they rest. And the triads of Hegel, consisting of thesis, antithesis, and union, are still more 

 at variance with all sound science. Thus we are told that matter and motion are determined as 

 inertia, impulsion, fall; that absolute Mechanics determines itself as centripetal force, centrifugal 

 force, universal gravitation. Light, it is taught, is a secondary determination of matter. Light 

 is the most intimate element of nature, and might be called the Me of nature : it is limited by what 

 we may call negative light, which is darkness. 



In these rash and blind attempts to construct physical science a priori, we may see how imper- 

 fect the Hegelian doctrines are, as a complete philosophy. In the views of moral and political sub- 

 jects the results of such a scheme are naturally less obviously absurd, and may often be for a 

 moment striking and attractive, as is usually the case with attempts to reduce history to a formula. 

 Thus we are told that the State appears under the following determinations : — first, as one, sub- 

 stantial, self-included : next, varied, individual, active, disengaging itself from the substantial and 

 motionless unity : next, as two principles, altogether distinct, and placed front to front in a marked 

 and active opposition : then, arising out of the ruins of the preceding, the idea appears afresh, one, 

 identical, harmonious. And the East, Greece, Rome, Germany, are declared to be the historical 

 forms of these successive determinations. Whatever amount of real historical colour there may be 

 for this representation, it will hardly, I think, be accepted as evidence of a profound political philo- 

 sophy ; but on such parts of the subject I shall not here dwell. 



I may observe that in the series of philosophical systems now described, the two elements of the 

 Fundamental Antithesis are, alternately dwelt upon in an exaggerated degree, and then confounded. 

 The Sensational School could see in human knowledge nothing but facts : Kant and Fichte fixed 

 their attention almost entirely upon ideas : Schelling and Hegel assume file identity of the two, 

 (a point which we never can reach,) as the origin of their philosophy. The external world in 

 Locke's school was all in all. In the speculations of Kant this external world became a dim and 

 unknown region. Things were acknowledged to be something in themselves, but what, the philoso- 

 pher could not tell. Besides the phcenomeiion which we see, Kant acknowledged a noumenon 

 which we think of; but this assumption, for such it is, exercises no infiuence upon his ])hilosophy. 

 Things in themselves, are in his Drama, merely a kind of mute personages, Kiccpd Trfjuaonra, which 

 stand on the stage to be pointed at and talked about, but which do not tell us anything, or enter 

 into the action of the piece. Fichte carries this further, and if we go on with the same illustration, 

 we may say that he makes the whole drama into a kind of monologue; in which the author tells the 

 story, and merely names the persons who ajipear. If we would still carry on the im.ige, we may say 

 that Schelling, going upon the principle that the whole of the drama is merely a progress to the 

 denoument, which denounicnt contains the result of all the preceding scenes and events, starts 

 with the last scene of the piece, and bringing all the characters on the stage in their final attitudes, 

 would elicit the story from this. While the true mode of jirocecding is, to follow the drama 



