PHILOSOPHY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 495 
argument, to prove that there is no real substantial existence, except of mind and its 
modifications. 
129. In the connection of attributes with the objects of our investigations, we observe 
different degrees of intimacy, some appearing inseparable and essential, while others are 
more or less accidental. - Thus it is impossible for us to think of matter as divested of the 
property of impenetrability, but inertia, divisibility, weight, and color, seem less closely 
connected with it,—being as it were the mere clothing of impenetrability,—and a demon- 
stration of the existence of matter in some form without either of these secondary quali- 
ties would not greatly surprise us. 
130. The phenomenal rests on the absolute, and the metaphysical fashion, which can 
be donned or doffed at pleasure, must be dependent on the purely metaphysical investiga- 
tions of thinkers, whose magnetic vigor can polarize the world of mind. The philosophical 
triumvirate that has ruled the last half century,—Fichte,* Cousin, and Hamilton, differing 
as they do in many of the details of doctrine, and standing in clear individuality as legiti- 
mate representatives of the three great forms of modern civilized speech and thought,— 
all build upon the same foundation, and all agree in a profound rational 'lranscendental- 
ism.t The pantheism of the German, the eclecticism of the French, and the practicalness 
of the English thinker, are but accidental appendages of their several systems,—cloaks 
that have indeed either set a local fashion, or been cut in a style already prevailing, but 
not the body or groundwork of their teachings. Each appeals for the confirmation of 
every truth, to a judge whose dicta are more authoritative than those of sensation or ex- 
perience, and whether that judge be called The Life, Consciousness, or Common Sense, is 
a matter of small moment. 
131. In the words of Fichte,{ “ We see, hear, feel, outward objects; and along with 
this seeing, &c., we also think those objects, and are conscious of them by means of our 
inward sense, just as we are conscious by the same inward sense, of our seeing, hearing, 
and feeling of those objects. . . . This inseparability of the outward, sensible perception 
and the inward thought or conception,—this coewistence, I say, and nothing more than this, 
lies in practical self-observation, or the fact of Consciousness. . . This fact of Conscious- 
ness does by no means contain any relation between . . the outward Sense and the inward 
* T regard both Schelling and Hegel as disciples of Fichte’s school. 
{ This term is often used by those who have a very vague idea of its meaning. The signification originally 
attached to it by the schoolmen, was modified by Kant, who called the necessary cognitions which are the founda- 
tion of experience transcendental. All philosophy which recognizes something higher than demonstration, as the 
source of all possible knowledge, may be called transcendentalism. See Hamilton’s remarks on “ TRANSCENDEN- 
TAL truths, principles, cognitions, judyments, &c.,” in his edition of Reid, p. 762, and Logic, p. 140. 
= Lecture on the difficulties arising from the common mode of thought. Smith’s Translation. 
VOL. X11.—63 
