Colonel Kenneny on the Vedanta System. 435 
** Except the Godly world, which as such is also unintermediately the 
actual one, there is positively nothing than the arbitrary thinking of indi- 
viduals, by means of which the world may be changed into a dead and 
absolute plurality, though nothing will hence be necessarily changed. 
Herr Ficure has imagined such a dead and endlessly imperfect world, 
will he assert that this has for him an actual existence, then must he also 
assert that he can see and does see, what neither is nor can be, #. e. that his 
senses have become erroneous and disordered. He who lives and moves 
merely in imagination, and holds his doing so as an absolute necessity, ven- 
tures, notwithstanding, to say, out of this imagination, to the natural philoso- 
pher, that he imagines things to be different from what they are; he, the 
dreamer, alleges that the real perceptions of him who is awake are nothing 
but dreams.’”’* 
These passages will be sufficient to shew that Scu#Liine’s system has no 
resemblance to the Véddnta, and, most ingeniously as he has supported it, 
the idealism which he ascribes to it is more apparent that real—at least, let 
God be once considered as Nature, and Nature as God, and the difference 
between this and other systems of material pantheism must depend on mere 
metaphysical distinctions, which have no real existence.t. 
To these remarks it may be objected, that they merely consist of a cento 
of quotations ; but in the discussion of a disputed subject, it seems to me 
that the adducing only the opinions of the writer, without explaining the 
grounds on which such opinions rest, can never prove satisfactory to the 
* Darlegung des Wahren Verhaltness der Natural Philosophie, &c. p. 121. 
+ Such reasoning as the following displays much metaphysical ingenuity, but is it in the least 
convincing ?— But (ScHELLING supposes some one to object) I actually see matter as extended 
in space, multiform, divisible, and circumscribed. This, I answer, is the fundamental error, namely, 
the notion that thou seest this. Thou mightest as well assure me that thou seest spots in the 
sun, for thou merely conyertest thy not seeing into seeing. Thou beholdest, whether thou 
knowest it or wishest it, only the eternal unity of the bounden and the bond, 7.¢. the bond 
itself ; all the rest thou mayst conceive or imagine, but never in any manner really perceive it. 
So, from what has been said, plurality is in no manner visible ; it can only be seen where it is 
manifested in unity, 7. e. when it is no longer plurality. Thou canst conceive plurality, and as 
such it exists in thy conception, but otherwise it is neither reality nor what actually is, since that 
is always one.’’—TIbid. p. 62. But unless this supposed identity between God and Nature be a 
mere mental abstraction, a mere ens rationis, I do not perceive how a system which maintains 
that this universe positively exists, and that all things proceed from and return unto the divine 
nature, can be considered to differ from other systems of material pantheism. 
Vor. Ill. 8 L 
