CHAPTER VI.

OF MEDIATION.

The comprehension of mediation lies at the basis of the distinction of sensuous knowing from the _understanding_. The transition from _intuition_ to _abstract thinking_ is made at first unconsciously, and for this reason the one who has begun the process of mediation handles the “mental spectres” created by abstraction with the utmost naïveté, assuming for them absolute validity in the world at large. It is only the speculative insight that gains mastery over such abstractions, and sees the Truth. If this view could be unfolded in a popular form, it would afford a series of solvents for the thinker which are applicable to a great variety of difficult problems. For it must be remembered that the abstract categories of the understanding—such as _essence and phenomenon_, _cause and effect_, _substance and attribute_, _force and manifestation_, _matter and form_, and the like, give rise to a series of _antinomies_, or contradictory propositions, when applied to the Totality. From the standpoint of mediation—that of simple reflection, “common sense” so called—these antinomies seem utterly insoluble. The reason of this is found in the fact that “common sense” places implicit faith in these categories (just mentioned), and never rises to the investigation of them by themselves. To consider the validity of these categories by themselves is called a _transcendental_ procedure, for it passes beyond the ordinary thinking which uses them without distrust.

The transcendental investigation shows that the insolubility attributed to these antinomies arises from the mistake of the thinker, who supposes the categories he employs to be exhaustive. Speculative insight begins with the perception that they are not exhaustive; that they have by a species of enchantment cast a spell upon the mind, under which every thing seems dual, and the weary seeker after Truth wanders through a realm of abstractions each of which assumes the form of a solid reality—now a giant, and now a dwarf, and now an impassible river, impenetrable forest, or thick castle wall defended by dragons.

The following questions will illustrate the character of the problems here described:

“Why deal with abstractions—why not hold fast by the concrete reality?”

(This position combats mediation under its form of _abstraction_.)

“Can we not know _immediately_ by intuition those objects that philosophy strives in vain to comprehend? in short, are not God, Freedom and Immortality certain to us and yet indemonstrable?”

(This position combats mediation as involved in a _system_ of Philosophy.)

These questions arise only in the mind that has already gone beyond the doctrine that it attempts to defend, and hence a self refutation is easily drawn out of the source from whence they originate.

ABSTRACTION.

(_a_) It will be readily granted that all knowing involves _distinction_. We must distinguish one object from another.

(_b_) But the process of distinguishing is a process that involves abstraction. For in separating this object from that, I contrast its marks, properties, _attributes_, with those of the other. In seizing upon one characteristic I must isolate it from all others, and this is nothing more nor less than abstraction.

(_c_) Therefore it is absurd to speak of knowing without abstraction, for this enters into the simplest act of perception.

(_d_) Nor is this a subjective defect, an “impotency of our mental structure,” as some would be ready to exclaim at this point. For it is just as evident that _things themselves_ obtain reality only through these very characteristics. One thing preserves its distinctness from another by means of its various _determinations_. Without these determinations all would collapse into _one_, nay, even “_one_” would vanish, for distinction being completely gone, _one-ness_ is not possible. This is the “_Principle of Indiscernibles_” enunciated by Leibnitz. Thus distinction is as necessary objectively as subjectively. The thing _abstracts_ in order to be _real_. It defends itself against what lies without it by specializing itself into single properties, and thus becoming in each a mere abstraction.

(_e_) Moreover, besides this prevalence of abstraction in the _theoretic_ field, it is still more remarkable in the _practical_ world. The business man decries abstractions. He does not know that every act of the will is an abstraction, and that it is also preceded by an abstraction. When he exhorts you to “leave off abstractions and deal with concrete realities,” he does this: (1.) he regards you as he thinks you are; (2.) he conceives you as different, i. e. as a _practical_ man; (3.) he exhorts you to change from your real state to the possible one which he conceives of (through the process of abstraction). The simplest act with design—that of going to dinner, for example—involves abstraction. If I raise my arm on purpose, I first abstract from its real position, and think it under another condition.

(_f_) But the chief point in all this is to mark how the mind frees itself from the untruth of abstraction. For it must be allowed that all abstractions are false. The isolation of that which is not sufficient for its own existence, (though as we have seen, a necessary constituent of the process of _knowing_ and of _existing_,) sets up an untruth as existent. Therefore the mind thinks this isolation only as a moment of a _negative unity_, (i. e. as an element of a process). This leads us to the consideration of mediation in the more general form, involved by the second question.

IMMEDIATE KNOWING.

(_a_) _Definition._—“Immediate” is a predicate applied to what is directly through itself. The immediateness of anything is the phase that first presents itself. It is the undeveloped—an _oak_ taken immediately is an _acorn_; man taken immediately is a child at birth.

(_b_) _Definition._—“Mediation” signifies the process of realization. A _mediate_ or _mediated_ somewhat is what it is through another, or through a process.

(_c_) _Principle._—Any concrete somewhat exists through its relations to all else in the universe; hence all concrete somewhats are _mediated_. “If a grain of sand were destroyed the universe would collapse.”

(_d_) _Principle._—An absolutely _immediate_ somewhat would be a pure nothing, for the reason that no determination could belong to it, (for determination is negative, and hence mediation). Hence all immediateness must be phenomenal, or the result of abstraction from the concrete whole, and this, of course, exhibits the contradiction of an immediate which is mediated (a “_result_.”)

(_e_) The solution of this contradiction is found in “self-determination,” (as we have seen in former chapters). The self-determined is a mediated; it is _through the process_ of determination; but is likewise an _immediate_, for it is its own mediation, and hence it is the beginning and end—_it begins with its result, and ends in its beginning_, and thus it is a circular process.

This is the great _aperçu_ of all speculative philosophy.

(_f_) _Definition._—Truth is the form of the Total, or that which actually exists.

(_g_) Hence a knowing of Truth must be a knowing of the self-determined, which is both immediate and mediate. This is a process or _system_. Therefore the knowing of it cannot be simply _immediate_, but must be in the form of a system. Thus the so-called “immediate intuition” is not a knowing of truth unless inconsistent with what it professes.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAADER.

[The following letter from Dr. Franz Hoffmann to the St. Louis Philosophical Society has been handed us for publication. It gives us pleasure to lay before our readers so able a presentation of the claims of Baader, and we trust that some of our countrymen will be led by it to investigate the original sources herein referred to.

We are requested to correct a misstatement that occurs in the first paragraph regarding the objects of the Philosophical Society. It was not founded for the special purpose of “studying German Philosophy from Kant to Hegel,” although it has many members who are occupied chiefly in that field. The Society includes among its members advocates of widely differing systems, all, however, working in the spirit of the Preamble to the Constitution, which says: “The object of this Society is to encourage the study and development of Speculative Philosophy; to foster an application of its results to Art, Science, and Religion; and to establish a philosophical basis for the professions of Law, Medicine, Divinity, Politics, Education, Art, and Literature.” We are indebted to Dr. A. Strothotte for the translation of the letter.—EDITOR.]

WÜRZBURG, Dec. 28, 1866.

_Mr. President_: In the first number of Vol. XLIX of the “_Zeitschrift für Philosophie_,” published at Halle, in Prussia, edited by Fichte, Ulrici and Wirth, notice is taken of a philosophical society, organized at St. Louis, with the object of pursuing the study of German philosophy from Kant to Hegel.

This fact promises a correlation of philosophical movements between North America and Germany which is of great importance. I presume, however, that you have already been led, or that you will be led, to go back beyond Kant to the first traces of German philosophy, and proceed from Hegel to the present time.

Now, although a thorough and comprehensive view of Hegel’s philosophy is in the first place to be recommended, yet the other directions in the movement of thought must not be lost sight of.

In the Berlin organ of the Philosophical Society of the Hegelians—_Der Gedanke_—edited by Michelet, may be found, as you perhaps know, an index of the works of Hegel’s school, by Rosenkranz, whereas on the other hand the rich literature of the anti-Hegelian writers is nowhere met with in any degree of completeness. Many of them, however, are noticed in Fichte’s journal, and in the more recent works on the history of philosophy, particularly in those of Erdmann, and still more in those of Ueberweg.

Among the prominent movements in philosophical thinking, during and after the time of Hegel, the profound utterances of a great and genial teacher, Franz Baader, reach a degree of prominence, even higher than is admitted by Erdmann and Ueberweg. This may be readily perceived by referring to the dissertation on Franz Baader, by Carl Philipp Fischer, of Erlangen, and still more by having recourse to Hamberger, Lutterbeck, and to my own writings.

* * * * *

I take the liberty of recommending to you and to the members of the Philosophical Society of St. Louis, the study of the works of a philosopher who certainly will have a great future, although his doctrines in the progress of time may undergo modifications, reforms and further developments. If Hegel had lived longer, the influence of Baader upon him would have been greater yet than became visible during his last years. He has thrown Schelling out of his pantheism, and pressed him towards a semi-pantheism, or towards a deeper theism. The influence of Baader on the philosophers after Hegel—J. H. Fichte, Weisse, Sempler, C. Ph. Fischer and others—is much greater than is commonly admitted. Whether they agree to it or not, still it is a fact that Baader is the central constellation of the movement of the German spirit, from pantheism to a deeper ideal-realistic theism. Such a genius, whatever position may be taken with regard to him, cannot be left unnoticed, without running the risk of being left behind the times. I ask nothing for Baader, but to follow the maxim—“Try all and keep the best.” I regret that so great a distance prevents me from sending your honorable Society some of my explanatory writings, which are admitted to be clear and thorough. It may suffice if I add a copy of my prospectus; and let me here remark, that a collection of my writings, in four large volumes, will be published by Deichert, in Erlangen. The first volume, perhaps, will be ready at Easter, 1867.

Erdmann, in his elements of the history of philosophy, has treated of the doctrines of Baader, too briefly it is true, but with more justice than he has used in his former work on the history of modern philosophy, and he bears witness that his esteem of Baader increases more and more. But he evidently assigns to him a wrong position, by considering Oken and Baader as extremes, and Hegel as the mean, while Oken and Hegel are the extremes, and Baader the mean. The most important phenomenon in the school of Hegel is the _Idee der Wissenschaft_ of Rosenkranz, (_Logik und Metaphysik_,) which represents Hegel in a sense not far distant from the standpoint of Baader. * * * * * * * C. H. Fischer’s Characteristics of Baader’s Theosophy speaks with high favor of him, but still I have to take several exceptions. According to my opinion, all the authors by him referred to, as Schelling, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Dauber and Baader, we must call theosophers—or call none of them so, but _philosophers_, in order to avoid misunderstanding. Then I do not see how Schelling can be called the “most genial philosopher of modern times,” and yet Baader the more, yea, the _most_ profound. Finally, a want of system must be admitted, but too great importance is attributed to this. If, however, systematism could decide here, then not Schelling but Hegel is the greatest philosopher of modern times. At all events Fischer’s Memorial at the Centennial Birthday of Baader is significant, and is written with great spirit and warmth. The most important work of C. Ph. Fischer, bearing on this subject, is his elements of the system of philosophy, or _Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences_. This is one of the most important of the works of the philosophers after Hegel and Baader. The Athenäum of Froschhammer, (Journal for Philosophy), appeared only for three years. It had to cease its publication, because on the one side the Ultramontanist party agitated against it, and on the other side it met with insufficient support. Its reissue would be desirable, but just now not practicable, for want of interest on the part of the public, although it could bear comparison with any other philosophical journal.

Here let me say, that from Baader there proceeded a strong impulse toward the revival of the study of the long-forgotten spiritual treasures of the mystics and theosophers of the middle ages, and of the time of the Reformation. From this impulse monographs have made their appearance about Scotus Erigena, Albertus Magnus—at least biographies of them—Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Nicholas Cusanus, Weigel, J. Böhme, Oettinger, etc. The most important of these I deem to be _Scotus Erigena_, by Joh. Huber, Christlieb and Kaulich; _Meister Eckhart_, by Bach, and _J. Böhme_, by J. Hamberger. Bach on _Eckhart_ is especially instructive with respect to the connection between modern philosophy and the theosophy of Eckhart and his school, to which also Nicholas Cusanus belonged.

I presume that it will yet be discovered that Copernicus was at least acquainted with Nicholas Cusanus, if he did not even sympathize with his philosophy. The director of the observatory at Krakau, Kerlinski, is at present preparing a monograph on Copernicus, which will probably throw light on this subject. Prowe’s pamphlet on Copernicus, which I have noticed in Glaser’s journal, refers to the investigations of Kerlinski, who has recently published a beautiful edition of the works of Copernicus. As in the early ages, first in the Pythagorean school, they approached the true doctrine of the Universe, so in the middle ages it appears in the school of Eckhart, for in a certain sense, and with some restriction, Nicholas Cusanus was the precursor of Copernicus.

I beg you, my dear sir, to communicate this letter to your honorable Society: should you see fit to publish it in a journal, you are at liberty to do so.

I remain, Sir, with great respect, Truly, yours, DR. FRANZ HOFFMANN, _Prof. of Philos. at the University of Würzburg_.

IN THE QUARRY. By A. C. B.

Impatient, stung with pain, and long delay, I chid the rough-hewn stone that round me lay; I said—“What shelter art thou from the heat? What rest art thou for tired and way-worn feet? What beauty hast thou for the longing eye? Thou nothing hast my need to satisfy!” And then the patient stone fit answer made— “Most true I am no roof with welcome shade; I am no house for rest, or full delight Of sculptured beauty for the weary sight; Yet am I still, material for all; Use me as such—I answer to thy call. Nay, tread me only under climbing feet, So serve I thee, my destiny complete; Mount by me into purer, freer air, And find the roof that archeth everywhere; So what but failure seems, shall build success; For all, as possible, thou dost possess.”

Who by the Universal squares his life, Sees but success in all its finite strife; In all that is, his truth-enlightened eyes Detect the May-be through its thin disguise; And in the Absolute’s unclouded sun, To him the two already are the one.

THE JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. Vol. I. 1867. No. 4.

INTRODUCTION TO THE OUTLINES OF A SYSTEM OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY; OR, ON THE IDEA OF SPECULATIVE PHYSICS AND THE INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF A SYSTEM OF THIS SCIENCE. 1799. [Translated from the German of SCHELLING, by TOM DAVIDSON.]

I. WHAT WE CALL NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IS A NECESSARY SCIENCE IN THE SYSTEM OF KNOWING.

The Intelligence is productive in two modes—that is, either blindly and unconsciously, or freely and consciously;—unconsciously productive in external intuition, consciously in the creation of an ideal world.

Philosophy removes this distinction by assuming the unconscious activity as originally identical, and, as it were, sprung from the same root with the conscious; this identity is by it _directly_ proved in the case of an activity at once clearly conscious and unconscious, which manifests itself in the productions of genius, _indirectly_, outside of consciousness, in the products of _Nature_, so far as in them all, the most complete fusion of the Ideal with the Real is perceived.

Since philosophy assumes the unconscious, or, as it may likewise be termed, the real activity as identical with the conscious or ideal, its tendency will originally be to bring back everywhere the real to the ideal—a process which gives birth to what is called Transcendental Philosophy. The regularity displayed in all the movements of Nature—for example, the sublime geometry which is exercised in the motions of the heavenly bodies—is not explained by saying that Nature is the most perfect geometry; but conversely, by saying that the most perfect geometry is what produces in Nature;—a mode of explanation whereby the Real itself is transported into the ideal world, and those motions are changed into intuitions, which take place only in ourselves, and to which nothing outside of us corresponds. Again, the fact that Nature, wherever it is left to itself, in every transition from a fluid to a solid state, produces, of its own accord, as it were, regular forms—which regularity, in the higher species of crystallization, namely, the organic, seems to become purpose even; or the fact that in the animal kingdom—that product of the blind forces of Nature—we see actions arise which are equal in regularity to those that take place with consciousness, and even external works of art, perfect in their kind;—all this is not explained by saying that it is an unconscious productivity, though in its origin akin to the conscious, whose mere reflex we see in Nature, and which, from the stand-point of the natural view, must appear as one and the same blind tendency, which exerts its influence from crystallization upwards to the highest point of organic formation (in which, on one side, through the art-tendency, it returns again to mere crystallization) only acting upon different planes.

According to this view, inasmuch as Nature is only the visible organism of our understanding, Nature _can_ produce nothing but what shows regularity and design, and Nature is _compelled_ to produce that. But if Nature can produce only the regular, and produces it from necessity, it follows that the origin of such regular and design-evincing products must again be capable of being proved necessary in Nature, regarded as self-existent and real, and in the relation of its forces;—_that therefore, conversely, the Ideal must arise out of the Real, and admit of explanation from it_.

If, now, it is the task of Transcendental Philosophy to subordinate the Real to the Ideal, it is, on the other hand, the task of Natural Philosophy to explain the Ideal by the Real. The two sciences are therefore but one science, whose two problems are distinguished by the opposite directions in which they move; moreover, as the two directions are not only equally possible, but equally necessary, the same necessity attaches to both in the system of knowing.

II. SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY.

Natural Philosophy, as the opposite of Transcendental Philosophy, is distinguished from the latter chiefly by the fact that it posits Nature (not, indeed, in so far as it is a product, but in so far as it is at once productive and product) as the self-existent; whence it may be most briefly designated as the Spinozism of Physics. It follows naturally from this that there is no place in this science for idealistic methods of explanation, such as Transcendental Philosophy is fitted to supply, from the circumstance that for it Nature is nothing more than the organ of self-consciousness, and everything in Nature is necessary merely because it is only through the medium of such a Nature that self-consciousness can take place; this mode of explanation, however, is as meaningless in the case of physics, and of our science which occupies the same stand-point with it, as were the old teleological modes of explanation, and the introduction of a universal reference to final causes into the thereby metamorphosed science of Nature. For every idealistic mode of explanation, dragged out of its own proper sphere and applied to the explanation of Nature, degenerates into the most adventurous nonsense, examples of which are well known. The first maxim of all true natural science, viz., to explain everything by the forces of Nature, is therefore accepted in its widest extent in our science, and even extended to that region, at the limit of which all interpretation of Nature has hitherto been accustomed to stop short; for example, to those organic phenomena which seem to pre-suppose an analogy with reason. For, granted that in the actions of animals there really is something which pre-supposes such analogy, on the principle of realism, nothing further would follow than that what we call reason is a mere play of higher and necessarily unknown natural forces. For, inasmuch as all thinking is at last reducible to a producing and reproducing, there is nothing impossible in the thought that the same activity by which Nature reproduces itself anew in each successive phase, is reproductive in thought through the medium of the organism (very much in the same manner in which, through the action and play of light, Nature, which exists independently of it, is created immaterial, and, as it were, for a second time), in which circumstance it is natural that what forms the limit of our intuitive faculty, no longer falls within the sphere of our intuition itself.

III. NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IS SPECULATIVE PHYSICS.

Our science, as far as we have gone, is thoroughly and completely realistic; it is therefore nothing other than Physics, it is only _speculative_ Physics; in its tendency it is exactly what the systems of the ancient physicists were, and what, in more recent times, the system of the restorer of Epicurean philosophy is, viz., Lesage’s Mechanical Physics, by which the speculative spirit in physics, after a long scientific sleep, has again, for the first time, been awakened. It cannot be shown in detail here (for the proof itself falls within the sphere of our science), that on the mechanical or atomistic basis which has been adopted by Lesage and his most successful predecessors, the idea of speculative physics is incapable of realization. For, inasmuch as the first problem of this science, that of inquiring into the _absolute_ cause of motion (without which Nature is not in itself a finished whole), is absolutely incapable of a mechanical solution, seeing that mechanically motion results only from motion _ad infinitum_, there remains for the real construction of speculative physics only one way open, viz., the dynamic, which lays down that motion arises not only from motion, but even from rest; that, therefore, there is motion in the rest of Nature, and that all mechanical motion is the merely secondary and derivative motion of that which is solely primitive and original, and which wells forth from the very first factors in the construction of a nature generally (the fundamental forces).

In hereby making clear the points of difference between our undertaking and all those of a similar nature that have hitherto been attempted, we have at the same time shown the difference between speculative physics and so-called empirical physics; a difference which in the main may be reduced to this, that the former occupies itself solely and entirely with the original causes of motion in nature, that is, solely with the dynamical phenomena; the latter, on the contrary, inasmuch as it never reaches a final source of motion in nature, deals only with the secondary motions, and even with the original ones only as mechanical (and therefore likewise capable of mathematical construction). The former, in fact, aims generally at the inner spring-work and what is _non-objective_ in Nature; the latter, on the contrary, only at the _surface_ of Nature, and what is objective, and, so to speak, _outside_ in it.

IV. ON THE POSSIBILITY OF SPECULATIVE PHYSICS.

Inasmuch as our inquiry is directed not so much upon the phenomena of Nature as upon their final grounds, and our business is not so much to deduce the latter from the former as the former from the latter, our task is simply this: to erect a science of Nature in the strictest sense of the term; and in order to find out whether speculative physics are possible, we must know what belongs to the possibility of a doctrine of Nature viewed as science.

(_a_) The idea of knowing is here taken in its strictest sense, and then it is easy to see that, in this acceptation of the term, we can be said to know objects only when they are such that we see the principles of their possibility, for without this insight my whole knowledge of an object, e. g. of a machine, with whose construction I am unacquainted, is a mere seeing, that is, a mere conviction of its existence, whereas the inventor of the machine has the most perfect knowledge of it, because he is, as it were, the soul of the work, and because it preëxisted in his head before he exhibited it as a reality.

Now, it would certainly be impossible to obtain a glance into the internal construction of Nature, if an invasion of Nature were not possible through freedom. It is true that Nature acts openly and freely; its acts however are never isolated, but performed under a concurrence of a host of causes, which must first be excluded if we are to obtain a pure result. Nature must therefore be compelled to act under certain definite conditions, which either do not exist in it at all, or else exist only as modified by others.—Such an invasion of Nature we call an experiment. Every experiment is a question put to Nature, to which she is compelled to give a reply. But every question contains an implicit _à priori_ judgment; every experiment that is an experiment, is a prophecy; experimenting itself is a production of phenomena. The first step, therefore, towards science, at least in the domain of physics, is taken when we ourselves begin to produce the objects of that science.

(_b_) We _know_ only the self-produced; knowing, therefore, in the _strictest_ acceptation of the term, is a _pure_ knowing _à priori_. Construction by means of experiment, is, after all, an absolute self-production of the phenomena. There is no question but that much in the science of Nature may be known comparatively _à priori_; as, for example, in the theory of the phenomena of electricity, magnetism, and even light. There is such a simple law recurring in every phenomenon that the results of every experiment may be told beforehand; here my knowing follows immediately from a known law, without the intervention of any particular experience. But whence then does the law itself come to me? The assertion is, that all phenomena are correlated in one absolute and necessary law, from which they can all be deduced; in short, that in natural science all that we know, we know absolutely _à priori_. Now, that experiment never leads to such a knowing, is plainly manifest, from the fact that it can never get beyond the forces of Nature, of which itself makes use as means.

As the final causes of natural phenomena are themselves not phenomenal, we must either give up all attempt ever to arrive at a knowledge of them, or else we must altogether put them into Nature, endow Nature with them. But now, that which we put into Nature has no other value than that of a pre-supposition (hypothesis), and the science founded thereon must be equally hypothetical with the principle itself. This it would be possible to avoid only in one case, viz., if that pre-supposition itself were involuntary, and as necessary as Nature itself. Assuming, for example, what must be assumed, that the sum of phenomena is not a mere world, but of necessity a Nature—that is, that this whole is not merely a product, but at the same time productive, it follows that in this whole we can never arrive at absolute identity, inasmuch as this would bring about an absolute transition of Nature, in as far as it is productive, into Nature as product, that is, it would produce absolute rest; such wavering of Nature, therefore, between productivity and product, will, of necessity, appear as a universal duplicity of principles, whereby Nature is maintained in continual activity, and prevented from exhausting itself in its product; and universal duality as the principle of explanation of Nature will be as necessary as the idea of Nature itself.

This absolute hypothesis must carry its necessity within itself, but it must, besides this, be brought to empiric proof; for, inasmuch as all the phenomena of Nature cannot be deduced from this hypothesis as long as there is in the whole system of Nature a single phenomenon which is not necessary according to that principle, or which contradicts it, the hypothesis is thereby at once shown to be false, and from that moment ceases to have validity as an hypothesis.

By this deduction of all natural phenomena from an absolute hypothesis, our knowing is changed into a construction of Nature itself, that is, into a science of Nature _à priori_. If, therefore, such deduction itself is possible, a thing which can be proved only by the fact, then also a doctrine of Nature is possible as a science of Nature; a system of purely speculative physics is possible, which was the point to be proved.

_Remark._—There would be no necessity for this remark, if the confusion which still prevails in regard to ideas perspicuous enough in themselves did not render some explanation with regard to them requisite.

The assertion that natural science must be able to deduce all its principles _à priori_, is in a measure understood to mean that natural science must dispense with all experience, and, without any intervention of experience, be able to spin all its principles out of itself—an affirmation so absurd that the very objections to it deserve pity. _Not only do we know this or that through experience, but we originally know nothing at all except through experience, and by means of experience_, and in this sense the whole of our knowledge consists of the data of experience. These data become _à priori_ principles when we become conscious of them as necessary, and thus every datum, be its import what it may, may be raised to that dignity, inasmuch as the distinction between _à priori_ and _à posteriori_ data is not at all, as many people may have imagined, one originally cleaving to the data themselves, but is a distinction made solely _with respect to our knowing_, and the _kind_ of our knowledge of these data, so that every datum which is merely historical for me—i. e. a datum of experience—becomes, notwithstanding, an _à priori_ principle as soon as I arrive, whether directly or indirectly, at insight into its internal necessity. Now, however, it must in all cases be possible to recognize every natural phenomenon as absolutely necessary; for, if there is no chance in nature at all, there can likewise be no original phenomenon of Nature fortuitous; on the contrary, for the very reason that Nature is a system, there must be a necessary connection for everything that happens or comes to pass in it, in some principle embracing the whole of Nature. Insight into this internal necessity of all natural phenomena becomes, of course, still more complete, as soon as we reflect that there is no real system which is not, at the same time, an organic whole. For if, in an organic whole, all things mutually bear and support each other, then this organization must have existed as a whole previous to its parts—the whole could not have arisen from the parts, but the parts must have arisen out of the whole. _It is not, therefore_, WE KNOW _Nature, but Nature_ IS, _à priori_, that is, everything individual in it is predetermined by the whole or by the idea of a Nature generally. But if Nature _is_ _à priori_, then it must be possible to _recognize_ it _as_ something that is _à priori_, and this is really the meaning of our affirmation.

Such a science, like every other, does not deal with the hypothetical, or the merely probable, but depends upon the evident and the certain. Now, we may indeed be quite certain that every natural phenomenon, through whatever number of intermediate links, stands in connection with the last conditions of a Nature; the intermediate links themselves, however, may be unknown to us, and still lying hidden in the depths of Nature. To find out these links is the work of experimental research. Speculative physics have nothing to do but to show the need of these intermediate links;[18] but as every new discovery throws us back upon a new ignorance, and while one knot is being loosed a new one is being tied, it is conceivable that the complete discovery of all the intermediate links in the chain of Nature, and therefore also our science itself, is an infinite task. Nothing, however, has more impeded the infinite progress of this science than the arbitrariness of the fictions by which the want of profound insight was so long doomed to be concealed. This fragmentary nature of our knowledge becomes apparent only when we separate what is merely hypothetical from the pure out-come of science, and thereupon set out to collect the fragments of the great whole of Nature again into a system. It is, therefore, conceivable that speculative physics (the soul of real experiment) has, in all time, been the mother of all great discoveries in Nature.

V. OF A SYSTEM OF SPECULATIVE PHYSICS GENERALLY.

Hitherto the idea of speculative physics has been deduced and developed; it is another business to show how this idea must be realized and actually carried out.

The author, for this purpose, would at once refer to his Outlines of a System of Natural Philosophy, if he had not reason to suspect that many even of those who might consider those Outlines worthy of their attention, would come to it with certain preconceived ideas, which he has not presupposed, and which he does not desire to have pre-supposed.

The causes which may render an insight into the tendency of those Outlines difficult, are (exclusive of defects of style and arrangement) mainly, the following:

1. That many persons, misled perhaps by the word _Natural Philosophy_, expect to find transcendental deductions from natural phenomena, such as, in different fragments, exist elsewhere, and will regard natural philosophy generally as a part of transcendental philosophy, whereas it forms a science altogether peculiar, altogether different from, and independent of, every other.

2. That the notions of dynamical physics hitherto diffused, are very different from, and partially at variance with, those which the author lays down. I do not speak of the modes of representation which several persons, whose business is really mere experiment, have figured to themselves in this connection; for example, where they suppose it to be a dynamical explanation, when they reject a galvanic fluid, and accept instead of it certain vibrations in the metals; for these persons, as soon as they observe that they have understood nothing of the matter, will revert, of their own accord, to their previous representations, which were made for them. I speak of the modes of representation which have been put into philosophic heads by Kant, and which may be mainly reduced to this: that we see in matter nothing but the occupation of space in definite degrees, in all difference of matter, therefore, only mere difference of occupation of space (i. e. density,) in all dynamic (qualitative) changes, only mere changes in the relation of the repelling and attracting forces. Now, according to this mode of representation, all the phenomena of Nature are looked at only on their lowest plane, and the dynamical physics of these philosophers begin precisely at the point where they ought properly to leave off. It is indeed certain that the last result of every dynamical process is a changed degree of occupation of space—that is, a changed density; inasmuch, now, as the dynamical process of Nature is one, and the individual dynamical processes are only shreds of the one fundamental process—even magnetic and electric phenomena, viewed from this stand-point, will be, not actions of particular materials, but changes in the constitution of matter itself; and as this depends upon the mutual action of the fundamental forces, at last, changes in the relation of the fundamental forces themselves. We do not indeed deny that these phenomena at the extreme limit of their manifestation are changes in the relation of the principles themselves; we only deny that these changes are nothing more; on the contrary, we are convinced that this so-called dynamical principle is too superficial and defective a basis of explanation for all Nature’s phenomena, to reach the real depth and manifoldness of natural phenomena, inasmuch as by means of it, in point of fact, no qualitative change of matter _as_ such is constructible (for change of density is only the external phenomenon of a higher change). To adduce proof of this assertion is not incumbent upon us, till, from the opposite side, that principle of explanation is shown by actual fact to exhaust Nature, and the great chasm is filled up between that kind of dynamical philosophy and the empirical attainments of physics—as, for example, in regard to the very different kinds of effects exhibited by simple substances—a thing which, let us say at once, we consider to be impossible.

We may therefore be permitted, in the room of the hitherto prevailing dynamic mode of representation, to place our own without further remark—a procedure which will no doubt clearly show wherein the latter differs from the former, and by which of the two the Doctrine of Nature may most certainly be raised to a Science of Nature.

VI. INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF THE SYSTEM OF SPECULATIVE PHYSICS.

1.

An inquiry into the Principle of speculative physics must be preceded by inquiries into the distinction between the speculative and the empirical generally. This depends mainly upon the conviction that between empiricism and theory there is such a complete opposition that there can be no third thing in which the two may be united; that, therefore, the idea of Experimental Science is a mongrel idea, which implies no connected thought, or rather, which cannot be thought at all. What is pure empiricism is not science, and, _vice versâ_, what is science is not empiricism. This is not said for the purpose of at all depreciating empiricism, but is meant to exhibit it in its true and proper light. Pure empiricism, be its object what it may, is history (the absolute opposite of theory), and, conversely, history alone is empiricism.[19]

Physics, as empiricism, are nothing but a collection of facts, of accounts of what has been observed—what has happened under natural or artificial circumstances. In what we at present designate physics, empiricism and science run riot together, and for that very reason they are neither one thing nor another.

Our aim, in view of this object, is to separate science and empiricism as soul and body, and by admitting nothing into science which is not susceptible of an _à priori_ construction, to strip empiricism of all theory, and restore it to its original nakedness.

The opposition between empiricism and science rests therefore upon this: that the former regards its object in _being_—as something already prepared and accomplished; science, on the other hand, views its object in _becoming_, and as something that has yet to be accomplished. As science cannot set out from anything that is a product—that is, a thing—it must set out from the unconditioned; the first inquiry of speculative physics is that which relates to the unconditioned in natural science.

2.

As this inquiry is, in the Outlines, deduced from the highest principles, the following may be regarded as merely an illustration of those inquiries:

Inasmuch as everything of which we can say that it _is_, is of a conditioned nature, it is only _being itself_ that can be the unconditioned. But seeing that individual being, as a conditioned, can be thought only as a particular limitation of the productive activity (the sole and last substrate of all reality) _being itself_ is _thought_ as the same productive activity _in its unlimitedness_. For the philosophy of nature, therefore, nature is originally only productivity, and from this as its principle science must set out.

So long as we know the totality of objects only as the sum of being, this totality is a mere world—that is, a mere product for us. It would certainly be impossible in the science of Nature to rise to a higher idea than that of being, if all permanence (which is thought in the idea of being) were not deceptive, and really a continuous and uniform reproduction.

In so far as we regard the totality of objects not merely as a product, but at the same time necessarily as productive, it rises into _Nature_ for us, and this _identity of the product and the productivity_, and this alone is implied, even in the ordinary use of language by the idea of Nature.

Nature as a mere product (_natura naturata_) we call Nature as object (with this alone all empiricism deals). Nature as productivity (_natura naturans_) we call Nature as subject (with this alone all theory deals).

As the object is never unconditioned, something absolutely non-objective must be put into Nature; this absolutely non-objective is nothing else but that original productivity of Nature. In the ordinary view it vanishes in the product: conversely in the philosophic view the product vanishes in the productivity.

Such identity of the product and the productivity in the original conception of Nature is expressed by the ordinary views of Nature as a whole, which is at once the cause and the effect of itself, and is in its duplicity (which goes through all phenomena) again identical. Furthermore, with this idea the identity of the Real and the Ideal agrees—an identity which is thought in the idea of every product of Nature, and in view of which alone the nature of art can be placed in opposition thereto. For whereas in art the idea precedes the act—the execution—in Nature idea and act are rather contemporary and one; the idea passes immediately over into the product, and cannot be separated from it.

This identity is cancelled by the empirical view, which sees in Nature only the effect (although on account of the continual wandering of empiricism into the field of science, we have, even in purely empirical physics, maxims which presuppose an idea of Nature as subject—as, for example, Nature chooses the shortest way; Nature is sparing in causes and lavish in effects); it is also cancelled by speculation, which looks only at _cause_ in Nature.

3.

We can say of Nature as object that it _is_, not of Nature as subject; for this is being or productivity.

This absolute productivity must pass over into an empirical nature. In the idea of absolute productivity, is the thought of an ideal infinity. The ideal infinity must become an empirical one.

But empirical infinity is an infinite becoming. Every infinite series is but the exhibition of an intellectual or ideal infinity. The original infinite series (the ideal of all infinite series) is that wherein our intellectual infinity evolves itself, viz., _Time_. The activity which sustains this series is the same as that which sustains our consciousness; consciousness, however, is _continuous_. Time, therefore, as the evolution of that activity, cannot be produced by composition. Now, as all other infinite series are only imitations of the originally infinite series, Time, no infinite series can be otherwise than continuous. In the original evolution the retarding agent (without which the evolution would take place with infinite rapidity) is nothing but _original reflection_; the necessity of reflection upon our acting in every organic phase (continued duplicity in identity) is the secret stroke of art whereby our being receives _permanence_.

Absolute continuity, therefore, exists only for the intuition, but not for the _reflection_. Intuition and reflection are opposed to each other. The infinite series is continuous for the productive _intuition_—interrupted and composite for the _reflection_. It is on this _contradiction_ between intuition and reflection that those sophisms are based, in which the possibility of all motion is contested, and which are solved at every successive step by the productive activity. To the intuition, for example, the action of gravity takes place with perfect continuity; to the reflection, by fits and starts. Hence all the laws of mechanics, whereby that which is properly only the object of the productive intuition becomes an object of reflection, are really only laws for the reflection. Hence those fictitious notions of mechanics, the atoms of time in which gravitation acts, the law that the moment of solicitation is infinitely small, because otherwise an infinite rapidity would be produced in finite time, &c., &c. Hence, finally, the assertion that in mathematics no infinite series can really be represented as continuous, but only as advancing by fits and starts.

The whole of this inquiry into the opposition between reflection and the productivity of the intuition, serves only to enable us to deduce the general statement that in _all_ productivity, and in productivity alone, there is absolute _continuity_—a statement of importance in the consideration of the whole of Nature; inasmuch, for example, as the law that in Nature there is no leap, that there is a continuity of forms in it, &c., is confined to the original productivity of Nature, in which certainly there must be continuity, whereas from the stand-point of reflection all things must appear _disconnected_ and _without_ continuity—placed beside each other, as it were; we must therefore admit that both parties are right; those, namely, who assert continuity in Nature—for example, in organic Nature—no less than those who deny it, when we take into consideration the difference of their respective stand-points; and we thereby, at the same time, arrive at the distinction between dynamical and atomistic physics; for, as will soon become apparent, the two are distinguished only by the fact that the former occupies the stand-point of _intuition_, the latter that of _reflection_.

4.

These general principles being presupposed, we shall be able, with more certainty, to reach our aim, and make an exposition of the internal organism of our system.

(_a_) In the idea of becoming, we think the idea of gradualness. But an absolute productivity will exhibit itself empirically as a becoming with infinite rapidity, whereby there results nothing real for the intuition.

(Inasmuch as Nature must in reality be thought as engaged in infinite evolution, the permanence, the resting of the products of Nature—the organic ones, for instance—is not to be viewed as an absolute resting, but only as an evolution proceeding with infinitely small rapidity or with infinite tardiness. But hitherto evolution, with even finite rapidity, not to speak of infinitely small rapidity, has not been constructed.)

(_b_) That the evolution of Nature should take place with finite rapidity, and thus become an object of intuition, is not thinkable without an original limitation (a being limited) of the productivity.

(_c_) But if Nature be absolute productivity, then the ground of this limitation may lie _outside of it_. Nature is originally _only_ productivity; there can, therefore, be nothing determined in this productivity (all determination is negation) and so products can never be reached by it. If products are to be reached, the productivity must pass from being undetermined to being determined—that is, it must, as pure productivity, be cancelled. If now the ground of determination of productivity lay outside of Nature, Nature would not be originally absolutely productivity. Determination, that is, negation, must certainly come into Nature; but this negation, viewed from a higher stand-point, must again be positivity.

(_d_) But if the ground of this limitation lies _within Nature itself_, then Nature ceases to be _pure identity_. (Nature, in so far as it is only productivity, is pure identity, and there is in it absolutely nothing capable of being distinguished. In order that anything may be distinguished in it, its identity must be cancelled—Nature must not be identity, but duplicity.)

Nature must originally be an object to itself; this change of the pure subject into a self-object is unthinkable without an original sundering in Nature itself.

This duplicity cannot therefore be further deduced physically; for, as the condition of all Nature generally, it is the principle of all physical explanation, and all physical explanation can only have for its aim the reduction of all the antitheses which appear in Nature to that original antithesis in the heart of Nature, _which does not, however, itself appear_. Why is there no original phenomenon of Nature without this duplicity, if in Nature all things are not mutually subject and object to each other _ad infinitum_, and Nature even, in its origin, at once product and productive?

(_e_) If Nature is originally duplicity, there must be opposite tendencies even in the original productivity of Nature. (The positive tendency must be opposed by another, which is, as it were, anti-productive—retarding production; not as the contradictory, but as the negative—the really opposite of the former.) It is only then that, in spite of its being limited, there is no passivity in Nature, when even that which limits it is again positive, and its original duplicity is a contest of really opposite tendencies.

(_f_) In order to arrive at a product, these opposite tendencies must concur. But as they are supposed equal, (for there is no ground for supposing them unequal,) wherever they meet they will annihilate each other; the product is therefore = 0, and once more no product is reached.

This inevitable, though hitherto not very closely remarked contradiction (namely, that a product can arise only through the concurrence of opposite tendencies, while at the same time these opposite tendencies mutually annihilate each other) is capable of being solved only in the following manner: There is absolutely no _subsistence_ of a product thinkable, _without a continual process of being reproduced_. The product must be thought as _annihilated at every step_, and at _every step reproduced anew_. We do not really see the subsisting of a product, but only the continual process of being reproduced.

(It is of course very conceivable how the series 1-1+1-1... on to infinity is thought as equal neither to 1 nor to 0. The reason however why this series is thought as =1/2 lies deeper. There is one absolute magnitude (=1), which, though continually annihilated in this series, continually recurs, and by this recurrence produces, not itself, but the mean between itself and nothing.—Nature, as object, is that which comes to pass in such an infinite series, and is = a fraction of the original unit, to which the never cancelled duplicity supplies the numerator.)

(_g_) If the subsistence of the product is a continual process of being reproduced, then all _persistence_ also is only in nature as _object_; in nature as _subject_ there is only infinite _activity_.

The product is originally nothing but a mere point, a mere limit, and it is only from Nature’s combatting against this point that it is, so to speak, raised to a full sphere—to a product. (Suppose, for illustration, a stream; it is _pure identity_; where it meets resistance, there is formed a whirlpool; this whirlpool is not anything abiding, but something that every moment vanishes, and every moment springs up anew.—In Nature there is originally nothing distinguishable; all products are, so to speak, still in solution, and invisible in the universal productivity. It is only when retarding points are given, that they are thrown off and advance out of the universal identity.—At every such point the stream breaks (the productivity is annihilated), but at every step there comes a new wave which fills up the sphere).

The philosophy of nature has not to explain the productive (side) of nature; for if it does not posit this as in nature originally, it will never bring it into nature. It has to explain the permanent. But the fact _that_ anything should become permanent in nature, can itself receive its explanation only from that contest of nature _against all permanence_. The products would appear as mere points, if nature did not give them extension and depth by its own pressure, and the products themselves would last only an instant, if nature did not at every instant crowd up against them.

(_h_) This seeming product, which is reproduced at every step, cannot be a really infinite product; for otherwise productivity would actually exhaust itself in it; in like manner it cannot be a finite product; for it is the force of the whole of nature that pours itself into it. It must therefore be at once infinite and finite; it must be only seemingly finite, but in infinite development.

* * * * *

The point at which this product originally comes in, is the universal point of retardation in nature, the point from which all evolution in nature begins. But in nature, as it is evolved, this point lies not here or there, but everywhere where there is a product.

This product is a finite one, but as the infinite productivity of nature concentrates itself in it, it must have a tendency to infinite development.—And thus gradually, and through all the foregoing intermediate links, we have arrived at the construction of that infinite becoming—the empirical exhibition of an ideal infinity.

We behold in what is called nature (i. e. in this assemblage of individual objects), not the primal product itself, but its evolution, (hence the point of retardation cannot remain _one_.)—By what means _this_ evolution is again absolutely retarded, which must happen, if we are to arrive at a fixed product, has not yet been explained.

But through this product an original infinity evolves itself; this infinity can never decrease. The magnitude which evolves itself in an infinite series, is still infinite at every point of the line; and thus nature will be still infinite at every point of the evolution.

There is only one original point of retardation to productivity; but any number of points of retardation to evolution may be thought. Every such point is marked for us by a product; but at every point of the evolution nature is still infinite; therefore nature is still infinite in every product, and in every one lies the germ of a universe.[20]

(The question, by what means the infinite tendency is retarded in the product, is still unanswered. The original retardation in the productivity of nature, explains only why the evolution takes place with finite rapidity, but not why it takes place with infinitely small rapidity.)

(_i_) The product evolves itself _ad infinitum_. In this evolution, therefore, nothing can happen, which is not already a product (synthesis), and which might not divide up into new factors, each of these again having its factors.

Thus even by an analysis pursued _ad infinitum_, we could never arrive at anything in nature which should be absolutely simple.

(_k_) If however we _suppose_ the evolution as completed, (although it _never_ can be completed,) still the evolution could not stop at anything which was a product, but only at the purely productive.

The question arises, whether a final, such that it is no longer a substrate, but the cause of all substrate, no longer a product, but absolutely productive—we will not say _occurs_, for that is unthinkable, but—can at least be proved in experience.

(_l_) Inasmuch as it bears the character of the unconditioned, it would have to exhibit itself as something, which, although itself not in space, is still the principle of all occupation of space.

What occupies space is not matter, for matter is the occupied space itself. That, therefore, which occupies space cannot be matter. Only that which is, is in space, not _being itself_.

It is self-evident that no positive external intuition is possible of that which _is_ not in space. It would therefore have to be capable of being exhibited negatively. This happens in the following manner:

That which is in space, is, as such, mechanically and chemically destructible. That which is not destructible either mechanically or chemically must therefore lie outside of space. But it is only the final ground of all quality that has anything of this nature; for although one quality may be extinguished by another, this can nevertheless only happen in a third product, C, for the formation and maintenance of which A and B, (the opposite factors of C,) must continue to act.

But this indestructible (somewhat), which is thinkable only as pure intensity, is, as the cause of all substrate, at the same time the principle of divisibility _ad infinitum_. (A body, divided _ad infinitum_ still occupies space in the same degree with its smallest part.)

That, therefore, which is purely productive without being a product, is but the final ground of quality. But every quality is a determinate one, whereas productivity is originally indeterminate. In the qualities, therefore, productivity appears as already retarded, and as it appears most original in them generally, it appears in them most originally retarded.

This is the point at which our mode of conception diverges from those of the currently so-called dynamical physics.

Our assertion, briefly stated, is this:—If the infinite evolution of nature were completed (which is impossible) it would separate up into original and simple actions, or, if we may so express ourselves, into simple productivities. Our assertion therefore is not: There are in nature such simple actions; but only, they are the ideal grounds of the explanation of quality. These _entelechies_ cannot actually be shown, they do not _exist_; we have not therefore to explain here anything more than is asserted, namely, that such original productivities must be _thought_ as the grounds of the explanation of all quality. This proof is as follows:

The affirmation that nothing which _is_ in space, that is, that nothing at all is mechanically simple, requires no demonstration. That, therefore, which is in reality simple, cannot be thought as in space, but must be thought as outside of space. But outside of space only pure intensity is thought. This idea of pure intensity is expressed by the idea of action. It is not the product of this action that is simple, but the action itself abstracted from the product, and it must be simple in order that the product may be divisible _ad infinitum_. For although the parts are near vanishing, the intensity must still remain. And this pure intensity is what, even in infinite divisibility, sustains the substrate.

If, therefore, the assertion that affirms something simple as the basis of the explanation of quality is atomistic, then our philosophy is atomistic. But, inasmuch as it places the simple in something that is only productive without being a product, it is _dynamical atomistics_.

This much is clear, that if we admit an absolute division of nature into its factors, the last (thing) that remains over, must be something, which absolutely defies all division, that is, the simple. But the simple can be thought only as dynamical, and as such it is not in space at all (it designates only what is thought as altogether outside of space-occupation); there is therefore no intuition of it possible, except through its product. In like manner there is no measure for it given but its product. For to pure thought it is the mere _origin_ of the product (as the point is only the origin of the line), in one word pure _entelechy_. But that which is known, not in itself, but only in its product, is known altogether empirically. If, therefore, every original quality, as quality (not as substrate, in which quality merely inheres), must be thought as pure intensity, pure action, then qualities generally are only the absolutely empirical in our knowledge of nature, of which no construction is possible, and in respect to which there remains nothing of the philosophy of nature, save the proof that they are the absolute limit of its construction.

The question in reference to the ground of quality posits the evolution of nature as completed, that is, it posits something merely thought, and therefore can be answered only by an ideal ground of explanation. This question adopts the stand-point of reflection (on the product), whereas genuine dynamics always remain on the stand-point of intuition.

It must here, however, be at once remarked that if the ground of the explanation of quality is conceived as an ideal one, the question only regards the explanations of quality, in so far as it is thought as absolute. There is no question, for instance, of quality, in so far as it shows itself in the dynamical process. For quality, so far as it is relative, there is certainly a [not merely ideal, but actually real] ground of explanation and determination; quality in that case is determined by its opposite, with which it is placed in conflict, and this antithesis is itself again determined by a higher antithesis, and so on back into infinity; so that, if this universal organization could dissolve itself, all matter likewise would sink back into dynamical inactivity, that is, into absolute defect of quality. (Quality is a higher power of matter, to which the latter elevates itself by reciprocity.) It is demonstrated in the sequel that the dynamical process is a limited one for each individual sphere; because it is only thereby that definite points of relation for the determination of quality arise. This limitation of the dynamical process, that is, the proper determination of quality, takes place by means of no force other than that by which the evolution is universally and absolutely limited, and this negative element is the only one in things that is indivisible, and mastered by nothing.—The absolute relativity of all quality may be shown from the electric relation of bodies, inasmuch as the same body that is positive with one is negative with another, and conversely. But we might now henceforth abide by the statement (which is also laid down in the Outlines): _All quality is electricity_, and conversely, _the electricity of a body is also its quality_, (for all difference of quality is equal to difference of electricity, and all [chemical] quality is reducible to electricity).—Everything that is sensible for us (sensible in the narrower acceptation of the term, as colors, taste, &c.), is doubtless sensible to us only _through_ electricity, and the only _immediately_ sensible (element) would then be electricity,[21] a conclusion to which the universal duality of every sense leads us independently, inasmuch as in Nature there is properly only one duality. In galvanism, sensibility, as a reagent, reduces all quality of bodies, for which it is a reagent to an original difference. All bodies which, in a chain, at all affect the sense of taste or that of sight, be their differences ever so great, are either alkaline or acid, excite a negative or positive shock, and here they always appear as active in a higher than the merely chemical power.

Quality considered as absolute is inconstructible, because quality generally is not anything absolute, and there is no other quality at all, save that which bodies show mutually in relation to each other, and all quantity is something in virtue of which the body is, so to speak, raised above itself.

All hitherto attempted construction of quality reduces itself to the two attempts; to express qualities by figures, and so, for each original quality, to assume a particular figure in Nature; or else, to express quality by analytical formulæ (in which the forces of attraction and repulsion supply the negative and positive magnitudes.) To convince oneself of the futility of this attempt, the shortest method is to appeal to the emptiness of the explanations to which it gives rise. Hence we limit ourselves here to the single remark, that through the construction of all matter out of the two fundamental forces, different degrees of density may indeed be constructed, but certainly never different qualities as qualities; for although all dynamical (qualitative) changes appear, in their lowest stage, as changes of the fundamental forces, yet we see at that stage only the product of the process—not the _process itself_—and those changes are _what require explanation_, and the ground of explanation must therefore certainly be sought in something higher.

The only possible ground of explanation for quality is an ideal one; because this ground itself presupposes something purely ideal. If any one inquire into the final ground of quality, he transports himself back to the starting point of Nature. But where is this starting point? and does not all quality consist in this, that matter is prevented by the general concatenation from reverting into its originality?

From the point at which reflection and intuition separate, a separation, be it remarked, which is possible only on the hypothesis of the evolutions being complete, physics divide into the two opposite directions, into which the two systems, the atomistic and the dynamical, have been divided.

The _dynamical_ system _denies_ the absolute evolution of Nature, and passes from Nature as synthesis (i. e. Nature as subject) to Nature as evolution (i. e. Nature as object); the atomistic system passes from the evolution, as the original, to Nature as synthesis; the former passes from the stand-point of intuition to that of reflection; the latter from the stand-point of reflection to that of intuition.

Both directions are equally possible. If the analysis only is right, then the synthesis must be capable of being found again through analysis, just as the analysis in its turn can be found through the synthesis. But whether the analysis is correct can be tested only by the fact that we can pass from it again to the synthesis. The synthesis therefore is, and continues, the absolutely presupposed.

The problems of the one system turn exactly round into those of the other; that which, in atomical physics, is the cause of the _composition_ of Nature is, in dynamical physics, _that which checks evolution_. The former explains the composition of Nature by the force of cohesion, whereby, however, no continuity is ever introduced into it; the latter, on the contrary, explains cohesion by the continuity of evolution. (All cohesion is originally only in the productivity.)

_Both systems set out from something purely ideal._ Absolute synthesis is as much purely _ideal_ as absolute analysis. The Real occurs only in Nature as _product_; but Nature is not product, either when thought as absolute involution or as absolute evolution; product is what is contained between the two extremes.

The first problem for both systems is to construct the product—i. e. that wherein those opposites become real. Both reckon with purely _ideal_ magnitudes so long as the product is not constructed: it is only in the _directions_ in which they accomplish this that they are opposed. Both systems, as far as they have to deal with merely ideal factors, have the same value, and the one forms the test of the other.—That which is concealed in the depths of productive Nature must be reflected as product in Nature as Nature, and thus the atomistic system must be the continual reflex of the dynamical. In the Outlines, of the two directions, that of atomistic physics has been chosen intentionally. It will contribute not a little to the understanding of our science, if we here demonstrate in the _productivity_ what was there shown in the _product_.

(_m_) _In the pure productivity of Nature there is absolutely nothing distinguishable except duality; it is only productivity dualized in itself that gives the product._

Inasmuch as the absolute productivity arrives only at producing _per se_, not at the producing of a determinate [somewhat], the tendency of Nature, in virtue of which product is arrived at, must be the _negative_ of productivity.

In Nature, in so far as it is real, there can no more be productivity without a product, than a product without productivity. Nature can only approximate to the two extremes, and it must be demonstrated _that_ it approximates to both.

(α) _Pure productivity passes originally into formlessness._

Wherever Nature loses itself in formlessness, productivity exhausts itself in it. (This is what we express when we talk of a becoming latent.)—Conversely, wherever the form predominates—i. e. wherever the productivity is _limited_—the productivity manifests itself; it appears, not as a (representable) product, but _as_ productivity, although passing over into one product, as in the phenomena of heat. (The idea of imponderables is only a symbolic one.)

(β) _If productivity passes into formlessness, then, objectively considered, it is the absolutely formless._

The boldness of the atomical system has been very imperfectly comprehended. The idea which prevails in it, of an absolutely formless [somewhat] everywhere incapable of manifestation as determinate matter, is nothing other than the symbol of nature approximating to productivity.—The nearer to productivity the nearer to formlessness.

(γ) _Productivity appears as productivity only when limits are set to it._

That which is everywhere and in everything, is, for that very reason, nowhere.—Productivity is fixed only by limitation.—_Electricity exists_ only at that point at which limits are given, and it is only a poverty of conception that would look for anything else in its phenomena beyond the phenomena of (limited) productivity.—The condition of _light_ is an antithesis in the electric and galvanic, as well as in the chemical, process, and even light which comes to us without our coöperation (the phenomenon of productivity exerted all round by the sun) presupposes that antithesis.[22]

(δ) _It is only limited productivity that gives the start to product._ (The explanation of product must begin at the origination of the fixed point at which the start is made.) _The condition of all formation is duality._ (This is the more profound signification that lies in Kant’s construction of matter from opposite forces.)

Electrical phenomena are the general scheme for the construction of matter universally.

(ε) _In Nature, neither pure productivity nor pure product can ever be arrived at._

The former is the negation of all product, the latter the negation of all productivity.

(Approximation to the former is the absolutely decomposible, to the latter the absolutely indecomposible, of the atomistics. The former cannot be thought without, at the same time, being the absolutely incomposible, the latter without, at the same time, being the absolutely composible.)

Nature will therefore originally be the middle [somewhat] arising out of the two, and thus we arrive at the idea of _a productivity engaged in a transition into product, or of a product that is productive ad infinitum_. We hold to the latter definition.

The idea of the product (the fixed) and that of the productive (the free) are mutually opposed.

Seeing that what we have postulated is already product, it can, if it is productive at all, be productive only in a _determinate way_. But determined productivity is (active) _formation_. That third [somewhat] must therefore be _in the state of formation_.

But the product is supposed to be productive _ad infinitum_ (that transition is never absolutely to take place); it will therefore at every stage be productive in a determinate way; the productivity will remain, but not the product.

(The question might arise how a transition from form to form is possible at all here, when _no_ form is fixed. Still, that _momentary_ forms should be reached, has already been rendered possible by the fact that the evolution cannot take place with infinite rapidity, in which case, therefore, for every step at least, the form is certainly a determinate one.)

The product will appear as in _infinite metamorphosis_.

(From the stand-point of reflection, as continually on the leap from fluid to solid, without ever reaching, however, the required form.—Organizations that do not live in the grosser element, at least live on the deep ground of the aërial sea—many pass over, by metamorphoses, from one element into another; and what does the animal, whose vital functions almost all consist in contractions, appear to be, other than such a leap?)

The metamorphosis will not possibly take place _without rule_. For it must remain within the original antithesis, and is thereby confined within limits.[23]

This accordance with rule will express itself solely by an internal relationship of forms—a relationship which again is not thinkable without an archetype which lies at the basis of all, and which, with however manifold divergences, they nevertheless all express.

But even with such a product, we have not that which we were in quest of—a product which, while productive _ad infinitum_, remains _the same_. That this product should remain the same seems unthinkable, because it is not thinkable without an absolute checking or suppression of the productivity.—The product would have to be checked, as the productivity was checked, for it is still productive—checked by dualization and limitation resulting therefrom. But it must at the same time be explained how the productive product can be checked at each individual stage of its formation, without its ceasing to be productive, or how, _by dualization itself the permanence of the productivity is secured_.

In this way we have brought the reader as far as the problem of the fourth section of the Outlines, and we leave him to find in it for himself the solution along with the corollaries which it brings up.—Meanwhile, we shall endeavor to indicate how the deduced product would necessarily appear from the stand-point of _reflection_.

The product is the synthesis wherein the opposite extremes meet, which on the one side are designated by the absolutely decomposible—on the other as indecomposible.—How continuity comes into the absolute discontinuity with which he sets out, the atomic philosopher endeavors to explain by means of cohesive, plastic power, &c., &c. In vain, for continuity is only _productivity_ itself.

The manifoldness of the forms which such product assumes in its metamorphosis was explained by the difference in the stages of development, so that, parallel with every step of development, goes a particular form. The atomic philosopher posits in nature certain fundamental forms, and as in it everything strives after form, and every thing which does form itself has also its _particular_ form, so the fundamental forms must be conceded, but certainly only as indicated in nature, not as actually existent.

From the standpoint of reflection, the becoming of this product must appear as a continual striving of the original actions toward the production of a determinate form, and a continual recancelling of those forms.

Thus, the product would not be product of a simple tendency; it would be only the visible expression of an internal proportion, of an internal equipoise of the original actions, which neither reduce themselves mutually to absolute formlessness, nor yet, by reason of the universal conflict, allow the production of a determinate and fixed form.

Hitherto (so long as we have had to deal merely with ideal factors), there have been opposite directions of investigation possible; from this point, inasmuch as we have to pursue a real product in its developments, there is only one direction.

(η) By the unavoidable separation of productivity into opposite directions at every single step of development the product itself is separated into _individual products_, by which, however, for that very reason, only different stages of development are marked.

That this is so may be shown _either_ in the products themselves, as is done when we compare them with each other with regard to their form, and search out a continuity of formation—an idea which, from the fact that continuity is never in the _products_ (for the reflection), but always only in the _productivity_, can never be perfectly realized.

In order to find continuity in productivity, the successive steps of the _transition of productivity into product_ must be more clearly exhibited than they have hitherto been. From the fact that the productivity gets _limited_, (_v. supra_,) we have in the first instance only the start for a product, only the fixed point for the productivity generally. It must be shown _how_ the productivity gradually materializes itself, and changes itself into products ever more and more fixed, so as to produce a _dynamical scale in nature_, and this is the real subject of the fundamental problem of the whole system.

In advance, the following may serve to throw light on the subject. In the first place, a dualization of the productivity is demanded; the cause through which this dualization is effected remains in the first instance altogether outside of the investigation. By dualization a change of contraction and expansion is perhaps conditioned. This change is not something in matter, but is _matter itself_, and the first stage of productivity passing over into product. _Product_ cannot be reached except through a stoppage of this change, that is, through a third [somewhat] which _fixes_ that change itself, and thus matter in its lowest stage—in the _first_ power—would be an object of intuition; that change would be seen in rest, or in equipoise, just as, conversely again, by the suppression of the third [somewhat] matter might be raised to a higher power. Now it might be possible that those products just deduced stood upon _quite different degrees_ of materiality, or of _that transition_, or that those different degrees were more or less _distinguishable_ in the one than in the other; that is, a dynamical scale of those products would thereby have to be demonstrated.

(_o_) In the _solution_ of the problem itself, we shall continue, in the first instance, in the direction hitherto taken, without knowing where it may lead us.

There are individual products brought into nature; but in these products productivity, _as_ productivity, is held to be still always distinguishable. Productivity has not yet absolutely passed over into product. The subsistence of the product is supposed to be a continual self-reproduction.

The problem arises: By what is this absolute transition—exhaustion of the productivity in the product—prevented? or by what does its subsistence become a continual self-reproduction?

It is absolutely unthinkable how the activity that everywhere tends towards a product is prevented from going over into it _entirely_, unless that transition is prevented _by external influences_, and the product, if it is to subsist, is compelled at every step to reproduce itself _anew_.

Up to this point, however, no trace has been discovered of a cause opposed to the product (to organic nature). Such a cause can, therefore, at present, only be postulated. We thought we saw the whole of nature exhaust itself in that product, and it is only here that we remark, that in order to comprehend such product, _something else_ must be presupposed, and a new antithesis must come into nature.

Nature has hitherto been for us absolute _identity_ in duplicity; here we come upon an antithesis that must again take place _within_ the other. This antithesis must be capable of being shown in the deduced product itself, if it is capable of being deduced at all.

The deduced product is an activity _directed outwards_; this cannot be distinguished as such without an activity _directed inwards from without_, (i. e. directed upon itself,) and this activity, on the other hand, cannot be thought, unless it is _pressed back_ (reflected) from without.

_In the opposite directions, which arise through this antithesis lies the principle for the construction of all the phenomena of life_—on the suppression of those opposite directions, life remains over, either as _absolute activity_ or _absolute receptivity_, since it is possible only as the perfect _inter-determination_ of receptivity and activity.

We therefore refer the reader to the Outlines themselves, and merely call his attention to the higher stage of construction which we have here reached.

We have above (_g_) explained the origin of a _product generally_ by a struggle of nature against the original point of check, whereby this point is raised to a full sphere, and thus receives permanence. Here, since we are deducing a struggle of _external_ nature, not against a mere point, but against a _product_, the first construction rises for us to a _second_ power, as it were,—we have a double product, and thus it might well be shown in the sequel that organic nature generally is only the higher power of the inorganic, and that it rises above the latter for the very reason that in it even that which was already product _again_ becomes product.

Since the product, which we have deduced as the most primary, drives us to a side of nature that is opposed to it, it is clear that our construction of the origin of a product generally is _incomplete_, and that we have not yet, by a long way, satisfied our problem; (the problem of all science is to construct the origin of a fixed product.)

A productive product, as such, can subsist only under the influence of external forces, because it is only thereby that productivity is interrupted—prevented from being extinguished in the product. For these external forces there must now again be a particular sphere; those forces must lie in a world which is _not productive_. But that world, for this very reason, would be a world fixed and undetermined in every respect. The problem—how a product in nature is arrived at—has therefore received a one-sided solution by all that has preceded. “The product is checked by dualization of the productivity at every single step of development.” But this is true only for the _productive_ product, whereas we are here treating of a _non-productive_ product.

The contradiction which meets us here can be solved only by the finding of a _general_ expression for the construction of a _product generally_, (regardless of whether it is productive or has ceased to be so).

* * * * *

Since the existence of a world, that is _not productive_ (inorganic) is in the first instance merely postulated, in order to explain the productive one, so its conditions can be laid down only hypothetically, and as we do not in the first instance know it at all except from its opposition to the productive, those conditions likewise must be deduced only from this opposition. From this it is of course clear,—what is also referred to in the Outlines—that this second section, as well as the first, contains throughout merely hypothetical truth, since neither organic nor inorganic nature is explained without our having reduced the construction of the two to a common expression, which, however, is possible only through the synthetic part.—This must lead to the highest and most general principles for the construction of a _nature_ generally; hence we must refer the reader who is concerned about a knowledge of our system altogether to that part. The hypothetical deduction of an inorganic world and its conditions we may pass over here all the more readily, that they are sufficiently detailed in the Outlines, and hasten to the most general and the highest problem of our science.

* * * * *

The most general problem of speculative physics may now be expressed thus: _To reduce the construction of organic and inorganic products to a common expression_.

We can state only the main principles of such a solution, and of these, for the most part, only such as have not been completely educed in the Outlines themselves—(3d principal section.)

A.

Here at the very beginning we lay down the principle that _as the organic product is the product in the second power, the_ ORGANIC _construction of the product_ must be, _at least, the sensuous image of the_ ORIGINAL _construction of all product_.

(_a_) In order that the productivity may be at all fixed at a point, _limits must be given_. Since _limits_ are the condition of the first phenomenon, the cause whereby limits are produced _cannot be a phenomenon_, it goes back into the interior of nature, or of each respective product.

In organic nature, this limitation of productivity is shown by what we call sensibility, which must be thought as the first condition of the construction of the organic product.

(_b_) The immediate effect of confined productivity is a _change of contraction and expansion_ in the matter already given, and as we now know, constructed, as it were, for the second time.

(_c_) Where this change stops, productivity passes over into product, and where it is again restored, product passes over into productivity. For since the product must remain productive _ad infinitum_, _those three stages of productivity_ must be _capable of being_ DISTINGUISHED in the product; the absolute transition of the latter into product is the cancelling of product itself.

(_d_) As these three stages are distinguishable in the _individual_, so they must be distinguishable in _organic nature throughout_, and the scale of organizations is nothing more than a scale of _productivity itself_. (Productivity exhausts itself to degree _c_ in the product _A_, and can begin with the product _B_ only at the point where it left off with _A_, that is, with degree _d_, and so on downwards to the _vanishing_ of all productivity. If we knew the absolute _degree_ of productivity of the _earth_ for example—a degree which is determined by the earth’s relation to the sun—the limit of organization upon it might be thereby more accurately determined than by incomplete experience—which must be incomplete for this reason, if for no other, that the catastrophes of nature have, beyond doubt, swallowed the last links of the chain. A true system of Natural History, which has for its object not the _products_ [of nature] but _nature itself_, follows up the one productivity that battles, so to speak, against freedom, through all its windings and turnings, to the point at which it is at last compelled to perish in the product.)

It is upon this dynamical scale, in the individual, as well as in the whole of organic nature, that the construction of all organic phenomena rests.

B.[24]

These principles, stated universally, lead to the following fundamental principles of a universal theory of nature.

(_a_) Productivity must be _primarily_ limited. Since _outside_ of limited productivity there is [only] _pure identity_ the limitation cannot be established by a difference already existing, and therefore must be so by an _opposition_ arising in _productivity itself_—an opposition to which we here revert as a first postulate.[25]

(_b_) This difference thought _purely_ is the first condition of all [natural] activity, the productivity is attracted and repelled[26] between opposites (the primary limits); in this change of expansion and contraction there arises necessarily a common element, but one which exists only _in change_. If it is to exist _outside_ of change, then the _change itself_ must become fixed. The _active_ in change is the productivity sundered within itself.

(_c_) It is asked:

(α) By what means such change can be fixed at all; it cannot be fixed by anything that is contained as a link in change itself, and must therefore be fixed by a _tertium quid_.

(β) But this _tertium quid_ must be able to _invade_ that original antithesis; but _outside_ of that antithesis nothing _is_[27]; it (that _tertium quid_) must therefore be primarily contained in it, as something which is mediated by the antithesis, and by which in turn the antithesis is mediated; for otherwise there is no ground why it should be primarily contained in that antithesis.

The antithesis is dissolution of identity. But nature is _primarily_ identity. _In_ that antithesis, therefore, there must again be a struggle after identity. This struggle is immediately conditioned _through_ the antithesis; for if there was no antithesis, there would be identity, absolute rest, and therefore no _struggle_ toward identity. If, on the other hand, there were not identity in the antithesis, the antithesis itself could not endure.

Identity produced out of difference is indifference; that _tertium quid_ is therefore a _struggle towards indifference_—a struggle which is conditioned, by the difference itself, and by which it, on the other hand, is conditioned.—(The difference must not be looked upon as a difference at all, and is nothing for the intuition, except through a third, which sustains it—to which change itself adheres.)

This _tertium quid_, therefore, is all that is substrate in that primal change. But substrate posits change as much as change posits substrate; and there is here no first and no second; but difference and struggle towards indifference, are, as far time is concerned, one and contemporary.

_Axiom._ No identity in Nature is absolute, but all is only indifference.

Since that _tertium quid_ itself _presupposes_ the primary antithesis, the antithesis itself cannot be _absolutely_ removed by it; _the condition of the continuance of that tertium quid_ [of that third activity, or of Nature] _is the perpetual continuance of the antithesis_, just as, conversely, _the continuance of the antithesis is conditioned by the continuance of the tertium quid_.

But how, then, shall the antithesis be thought as continuing?

We have one primary antithesis, between the limits of which all Nature must lie; if we assume that the factors of this antithesis can really pass over into each other, or go together absolutely in some _tertium quid_ (some individual product), then the antithesis is removed, and along with it the _struggle_, and so all the activity of nature. But that the antithesis should endure, is thinkable only by its being _infinite_—by the extreme limits being held asunder _in infinitum_—_so that always only the mediating links of the synthesis, never the last and absolute synthesis itself, can be produced_, in which case it is only _relative points of indifference_ that are always attained, never absolute ones, and every successively originated difference leaves behind a new and still unremoved antithesis, and this again goes over into indifference, which, in its turn, _partially_ removes the primary antithesis. Through the original antithesis and the struggle towards indifference, there arises a product, but the product partially does away with the antithesis; through the doing away of that part—that is, through the origination of the product itself—there arises a new antithesis, different from the one that has been done away with, and through it, a product different from the first; but even this leaves the absolute antithesis unremoved, duality therefore, and through it a product, will arise anew, and so on to infinity.

Let us say, for example, that by the product _A_, the antitheses _c_ and _d_ are united, the antitheses _b_ and _e_ still lie outside of that union. This latter is done away with in _B_, but this product also leaves the antithesis _a_ and _f_ unremoved; if we say that _a_ and _f_ mark the extreme limits, then the union of these will be that product which can never be arrived at.

Between the extremes _a_ and _f_, lie the antitheses _c_ and _d_, _b_ and _e_; but the series of these intermediate antitheses is infinite; all these intermediate antitheses are included in the one absolute antithesis.—In the product _A_, of _a_ only _c_, and of _f_ only _d_ is removed; let what remains of _a_ be called _b_, and of _f_, _e_; these will indeed, by virtue of the absolute struggle towards indifference, become again united, but they leave a new antithesis uncancelled, and so there remains between _a_ and _f_ an infinite series of intermediate antitheses, and the product in which those absolutely cancel themselves never _is_, but only _becomes_.

This infinitely progressive formation must be thus represented. The original antithesis would necessarily be cancelled in the primal product _A_. The product would necessarily fall at the indifference-point of _a_ and _f_, but inasmuch as the antithesis is an absolute one, which can be cancelled only in an infinitely continued, never actual, synthesis, _A_ must be thought as the centre of an infinite periphery, (whose diameter is the infinite line _a f_.) Since in the product of _a_ and _f_, only _c_ and _d_ are united, there arises in it the new division _b_ and _e_, the product will therefore divide up into opposite directions; at the point where the struggle towards indifference attains the preponderance, _b_ and _e_ will combine and form a new product different from the first—but between _a_ and _f_, there still lie an infinite number of antitheses; the indifference-point _B_ is therefore the centre of a periphery which is comprehended in the first, but is itself again infinite, and so on.

The antithesis of _b_ and _e_ in _B_ is _maintained_ through _A_, because it (_A_) leaves the antithesis _un-united_; in like manner the antithesis in _C_ is _maintained_ through _B_, because _B_, in its turn, cancels only a part of _a_ and _f_. But the antithesis in _C_ is maintained through _B_, only in so far as _A_ maintains the antithesis in _B_.[28] What therefore in _C_ and _B_ results _from_ this antithesis—[suppose, for example, the result of it were universal gravitation]—is _occasioned_ by the common influence of _A_, so that _B_ and _C_, and the infinite number of other products that come, as intermediate links between _a_ and _f_, are, in relation to _A_, only _one_ product.—The _difference_, which remains over in _A_ after the union of _c_ and _d_, is only _one_, into which then _B_, _C_, &c., again divide.

But the continuance of the antithesis is, in the case of every product, the condition of the struggle towards indifference, and thus a struggle towards indifference is maintained through _A_ in _B_, and through _B_ in _C_.—But the antithesis which _A_ leaves uncancelled, is only one, and therefore also this tendency in _B_, in _C_, and so on to infinity, is only conditioned and maintained through _A_.

The organization thus determined is no other than the organization of the Universe in the system of gravitation.—_Gravity_ is _simple_, but its _condition_ is duplicity.—Indifference arises only out of difference.—The cancelled duality is matter, inasmuch as it is only mass.

The _absolute_ indifference-point exists nowhere, but is, as it were, divided among several _single_ points.—The Universe which forms itself from the centre towards the periphery, _seeks_ the point at which even the extreme antitheses of nature cancel themselves; the impossibility of this cancelling guarantees the infinity of the Universe.

From every product _A_, the uncancelled antithesis is carried over to a new one, _B_, the former thereby becoming the cause of duality and gravitation for _B_.—(This carrying over is what is called action by distribution, the theory of which receives light only at this point.[29])—Thus, for example, the sun, being only _relative_ indifference, maintains, as far as its sphere of action reaches, the antithesis, which is the condition of weight upon the subordinate world-bodies.[30]

The indifference is cancelled at every step, and at every step it is restored. Hence, weight acts upon a body at rest as well as upon one in motion.—The universal restoration of duality, and its recancelling at every step, can [that is] appear only as a _nisus_ against a third (somewhat). This third (somewhat) is therefore the pure zero—abstracted from tendency it is nothing [= 0], therefore purely ideal, (marking only direction)—a _point_.[31] Gravity [the centre of gravity] is in the case of every total product only _one_ [for the antithesis is one], and so also the relative indifference-point is only _one_. The indifference-point of the _individual_ body marks only the line of direction of its tendency towards the universal indifference-point; hence this point may be regarded as the only one at which gravity acts; just as that, whereby bodies alone attain consistence for us, is simply this tendency outwards.[32]

Vertical falling towards this point is not a simple, but a compound motion, and it is a subject for wonder that this has not been perceived before.[33]

Gravity is not proportional to mass (for what is this mass but an abstraction of the specific gravity which you have hypostatized?); but, conversely, the mass of a body is only the expression of the momentum, with which the antithesis in it cancels itself.

(_d_) By the foregoing, the construction of matter in general is completed, but not the construction of specific difference in matter.

That which all the matter of _B_, _C_, &c., in relation to _A_ has _common_ under it, is the difference which is not cancelled by _A_, and which again cancels itself _in part_ in _B_ and _C_—hence, therefore, the gravity mediated by that difference.

What _distinguishes B_ and _C_ from _A_ therefore, is the difference which is not cancelled by _A_, and which becomes the condition of gravity in the case of _B_ and _C_.—Similarly, what distinguishes _C_ from _B_ (if _C_ is a product subordinate to _B_), is the difference which is not cancelled by _B_, and which is again carried over to _C_. Gravity, therefore, is not the same thing for the higher and for the subaltern world-bodies, and there is as much variety in the central forces as in the conditions of attraction.

The means whereby, in the products _A_, _B_, _C_, which, in so far as they are opposed to _each other_, represent products absolutely _homogeneous_ [because the antithesis is the same for the _whole product_,] another difference of individual products is possible, is the possibility of a difference of relation between the factors in the cancelling, so that, for example, in _X_, the positive factor, and in _Y_, the negative factor, has the preponderance, (thus rendering the one body positively, and the other negatively, electric).—All difference is difference of electricity.[34]

(_e_) That the identity of matter is not _absolute_ identity, but only _indifference_, can be proved from the possibility of again cancelling the identity, and from the accompanying phenomena.[35] We may be allowed, for brevity’s sake, to include this recancelling, and its resultant phenomena under the expression _dynamical process_, without, of course, affirming decisively whether anything of the sort is everywhere actual.

_Now there will be exactly as many stages in the dynamical process as there are stages of transition from difference to indifference._

(α) The first stage will be marked by objects _in which the reproduction and recancelling of the antithesis at every step is still itself an object of perception_.

The whole product is reproduced anew at every step,[36] that is, the antithesis which cancels itself in it, springs up afresh every moment; but this reproduction of difference loses itself immediately in _universal_ gravity;[37] this reproduction, therefore, can be perceived only in _individual_ objects, which seem to gravitate _towards each other_; since, if to the one factor of an antithesis is offered its opposite (in another) _both factors_ become _heavy with reference to each other_, in which case, therefore, the general gravity is not cancelled, but a special one occurs _within_ the general.—An instance of such a mutual relation between two products, is that of the earth and the magnetic needle, in which is distinguished the continual recancelling of indifference in gravitation towards the poles[38]—the continual sinking back into identity[39] in gravitation towards the universal indifference-point. Here, therefore, it is not the _object_, but the _being-reproduced of the object_ that becomes object.[40]

(β) At the first stage, _in_ the identity of the product, its duplicity again appears; at the second, the antithesis will divide up and distribute itself among different objects (_A_ and _B_). From the fact that the one factor of the antithesis attained a _relative_ preponderance in _A_, the other in _B_, there will arise, according to the same law as in α, a _gravitation_ of the factors toward each other, and so a new difference, which, when the relative equiponderance is restored in each, results in repulsion[41]—(change of attraction and repulsion, _second_ stage in which matter is seen)—_electricity_.

(γ) At the second stage the one factor of the product had only a _relative_ preponderance;[42] at the _third_ it will attain an _absolute_ one—by the two bodies _A_ and _B_, the original antithesis is again completely represented—matter will revert to the _first stage_ of becoming.

At the _first stage_ there is still PURE _difference_, without substrate [for it was only out of it that a substrate arose]; at the second stage it is the _simple_ factors of two _products_ that are opposed to each other; at the third it is the PRODUCTS THEMSELVES that are opposed; here is difference in the _third_ power.

If two products are absolutely opposed to each other,[43] then in each of them singly indifference of gravity (by which alone each _is_) must be _cancelled_, and they must gravitate to _each other_.[44] (In the second stage there was only a mutual gravitating of the factors to each other—here there is a gravitating of the products.)[45]—This process, therefore, first assails the _indifferent (element) of the_ PRODUCT—that is, the products themselves dissolve.

Where there is equal difference there is equal indifference; difference of _products_, therefore, can end only with _indifference of products_.—(All hitherto deduced indifference has been only indifference of substrateless, or at least simple factors.—Now we come to speak of an indifference of products.) This struggle will not cease till there exists a common product. The product, in forming itself, passes, from both sides, through all the intermediate links that lie between the two products [for example, through all the intermediate stages of specific gravity], till it finds the point at which it succumbs to indifference, and the product is fixed.

GENERAL REMARK.

By virtue of the first construction, the product is posited as identity; this identity, it is true, again resolves itself into an antithesis, which, however, is no longer an antithesis cleaving to _products_, but an antithesis in the _productivity_ itself.—The product, therefore, _as_ product, is identity.—But even in the sphere of products, there again arises a duplicity in the second stage, and it is only in the third that even the duplicity of the _products_ again becomes _identity_ of the products.[46]—There is therefore here also a progress from thesis to antithesis, and thence to synthesis.—The last synthesis of matter closes in the chemical process; if composition is to proceed yet further in it, then this circle must open again.

We must leave it to our readers themselves to make out the conclusions to which the principles here stated lead, and the universal interdependence which is introduced by them into the phenomena of Nature.—Nevertheless, to give one instance: when in the chemical process the bond of gravity is loosed, the phenomenon of _light_ which accompanies the chemical process in its greatest perfection (in the process of combustion), is a remarkable phenomenon, which, when followed out further, confirms what is stated in the Outlines, page 146:—“The action of light must stand in secret interdependence with the action of gravity which the central bodies exercise.”—For, is not the indifference dissolved at every step, since gravity, as ever active, presupposes a continual cancelling of indifference?—It is thus, therefore, that the sun, by the distribution exercised on the earth, causes a universal separation of matter into the primary antithesis (and hence gravity). This universal cancelling of indifference is what appears to us (who are endowed with life) as _light_; wherever, therefore, that indifference is dissolved (in the chemical process), there light _must_ appear to us. According to the foregoing, it is _one_ antithesis which, beginning at magnetism, and proceeding through electricity, at last loses itself in the chemical phenomena.[47] In the chemical process, namely, _the whole product_ + _E_ or - _E_ (the _positively_ electric body, in the case of absolutely _unburnt_ bodies, is always the _more combustible_;[48] whereas the _absolutely incombustible_ is the cause of all _negatively_ electric condition;) and if we may be allowed to invert the case, what then are bodies themselves but condensed (confined) electricity? In the chemical process the whole body dissolves into + _E_ or - _E_. Light is everywhere the appearing of the _positive_ factor in the primary antithesis; hence, wherever the antithesis is restored, there is _light_ for us, because generally only the positive factor is beheld, and the negative one is only felt.—Is the connection of the diurnal and annual deviations of the magnetic needle with light now conceivable—and, if in every chemical process the antithesis is dissolved, is it conceivable that Light is the cause and beginning of all chemical process?[49]

(_f_) The dynamical process is nothing but the second construction of matter, and however many stages there are in the dynamical process, there are the same number in the original construction of matter. This axiom is the converse of axiom _e_.[50] That which, in the dynamical process is perceived in the product, takes place _outside_ of the product with the simple factors of all duality.

The first start to original production is the limitation of productivity through the primitive antithesis, which, _as_ antithesis (and as the condition of all construction), is distinguished only in _magnetism_; the second stage of production is the _change_ of contraction and expansion, and as such becomes visible only in _electricity_; finally, the third stage is the transition of this change into indifference—a change which is recognized as such only in _chemical_ phenomena.

MAGNETISM, ELECTRICITY AND CHEMICAL PROCESS are the _categories_ of the original construction of nature [matter]—the latter escapes us and lies outside of intuition, the former are what of it remains behind, what stands firm, what is fixed—the general schemes for the construction of matter.[51]

And—in order to close the circle at the point where it began—just as in organic nature, in the scale of sensibility, irritability, and formative instinct, the secret of the production of the _whole of organic nature_ lies in each individual, so in the scale of magnetism, electricity, and chemical process, so far as it (the scale) can be distinguished in the individual body, is to be found the secret of the production of _Nature from itself_ [of the whole of Nature[52]].

C.

We have now approached nearer the solution of our problem, which was: To reduce the construction of organic and inorganic nature to a common expression.

Inorganic nature is the product of the _first_ power, organic nature of the _second_[53]—(this was demonstrated above; it will soon appear that the latter is the product of a still higher power)—hence the latter, in view of the former, appears contingent; the former, in view of the latter, necessary. Inorganic nature can take its origin from _simple_ factors, organic nature only from products, which again become factors. Hence an inorganic nature generally will appear as having been from all eternity, the organic nature as _originated_.

In the organic nature, indifference can never be arrived at in the same way in which it is arrived at in inorganic nature, because life consists in nothing more than a continual _prevention of the attainment of indifference_ [a prevention of the absolute transition of productivity into product] whereby manifestly there comes about only a condition which is, so to speak, extorted from Nature.

By organization, matter—which has already been composed for the second time by the chemical process—is once more thrown back to the initial point of formation (the circle above described is again opened); it is no wonder that matter always thrown back again into formation at last returns as a perfect product.

The same stages, through which the production of Nature originally passes, are also passed through by the production of the organic product; only that the latter, even _in the first stage_, at least begins with products of the _simple_ power.—Organic production also begins with limitation, not of the _primary_ productivity, but of the _productivity of a product_; organic formation also takes place through the change of expansion and contraction, just as primary formation does; but in this case it is a change taking place, not in the simple productivity, but in the compound.

But there is all this, too, in the chemical process,[54] and yet in the chemical process indifference is attained. The vital process, therefore, must again be a higher power of the chemical; and if the scheme that lies at the base of the latter is duplicity, the scheme of the former will of necessity be _triplicity_ [the former will be a process of the third power]. But the scheme of triplicity is [in reality] that [the fundamental scheme] of the galvanic process (Ritter’s _Demonstration_, &c., p. 172); therefore the galvanic process (or the process of irritation) stands a power higher than the chemical, and the third element, which the latter lacks and the former has, prevents indifference from being arrived at in the organic product.[55]

As irritation does not allow indifference to be arrived at in the individual product, and as the antithesis is still there (for the primary antithesis still pursues us),[56] there remains for nature no alternative but separation of the factors in _different_ products.[57] The formation of the individual product, for that very reason, cannot be a completed formation, and the product can never cease to be productive.[58] The contradiction in Nature is this, that the product must be _productive_ [i. e. a product of the third power], and that, notwithstanding, the product, _as_ a product of the third power, must pass over into indifference.[59]

This contradiction Nature tries to solve by mediating _indifference_ itself through _productivity_, but even this does not succeed—for the act of productivity is only the kindling spark of a new process of irritation; the product of productivity is a _new productivity_. Into this as its product the productivity of the _individual_ now indeed passes over; the individual, therefore, ceases more rapidly or slowly to be productive, and Nature reaches the indifference-point with it only after the latter has got down to a product of the second power.[60]

And now the result of all this?—The condition of the inorganic (as well as of the organic) product, is duality. In any case, however, organic _productive product_ is so only from the fact _that the difference_ NEVER _becomes indifference_.

It is [in so far] therefore impossible to reduce the construction of organic and of inorganic product to a _common_ expression, and the problem is incorrect, and therefore the solution impossible. The problem presupposes that organic product and inorganic product are mutually _opposed_, whereas the latter is only the _higher power_ of the former, and is produced only by the higher power of the forces through which the latter also is produced. Sensibility is only the higher power of magnetism; irritability only the higher power of electricity; formative instinct only the higher power of the chemical process.—But sensibility, and irritability, and formative instinct are all only included in that _one_ process of irritation. (Galvanism affects them all).[61] But if they are only the higher functions of magnetism, electricity, &c., there must again be a higher synthesis for these in Nature[62]—and this, however, it is certain, can be sought for only in Nature, in so far as, viewed as a whole, it is _absolutely_ organic.

And this, moreover, is also the result to which the genuine Science of Nature must lead, viz: that the difference between organic and inorganic nature is only in Nature as object, and that Nature as originally-_productive_ soars above both.[63]

* * * * *

There remains only one remark, which we may make, not so much on account of its intrinsic interest, as in order to justify what we said above in regard to the relation of our system to the hitherto so-called dynamical system. If it were asked, for instance, in what form our original antithesis, cancelled, or rather fixed, in the product, would appear from the stand-point of reflection, we cannot better designate what is found in the product by analysis, than as _expansive_ and _attractive_ (retarding) _force_, to which then however, gravitation must always be added as the _tertium quid_, whereby those opposites become what they are.

Nevertheless, the designation is valid only for the stand-point of reflection or of _analysis_, and cannot be applied for _synthesis_ at all; and thus our system leaves off exactly at the point where the Dynamical Physics of Kant and his successors begins, namely, at the antithesis as it presents itself in the product.

And with this the author delivers over these Elements of a System of Speculative Physics to the thinking heads of the age, begging them to make common cause with him in this science, which opens up views of no mean order, and to make up by their own powers, acquirements and external relations, for what, in these respects, he lacks.

[The notes not marked as “Remarks of the original” are by the German Editor.—_Note of the Translator._]

Footnote 18:

Thus, for example, it becomes very clear through the whole course of our inquiry, that, in order to render the dynamic organization of the Universe evident in all its parts, we still lack that central phenomenon of which Bacon already speaks, which certainly lies in Nature, but has not yet been extracted from it by experiment. [_Remark of the Original._ Compare below, third note to “General Remark.”]

Footnote 19:

If only those warm panegyrists of empiricism, who exalt it at the expense of science, did not, true to the idea of empiricism, try to palm off upon us as empiricism their own judgments, and what they have put into nature, and imposed upon objects; for though many persons think they can talk about it, there is a great deal more belonging to it than many imagine—to eliminate purely the accomplished from Nature, and to state it with the same fidelity with which it has been eliminated.—_Remark of the Original._

Footnote 20:

A traveller in Italy makes the remark that the whole history of the world may be demonstrated on the great obelisk at Rome; so, likewise, in every product of Nature. Every mineral body is a fragment of the annals of the earth. But what is the earth? Its history is interwoven with the history of the whole of Nature, and so passes from the fossil through the whole of inorganic and organic Nature, till it culminates in the history of the universe—one chain.—_Remark of the Original._

Footnote 21:

Volta already asks, with reference to the affection of the senses by galvanism—“Might not the electric fluid be the immediate cause of all flavors? Might it not be the cause of sensation in all the other senses?”—_Remark of the Original._

Footnote 22:

According to the foregoing experiments, it is at least not impossible to regard the phenomena of light and those of electricity as one, since in the prismatic spectrum the colors _may_ at least be considered as opposites, and the white light, which regularly falls in the middle, be regarded as the indifference-point; and for reasons of analogy one is tempted to consider _this_ construction of the phenomena of light as the real one.—_Remark of the Original._

Footnote 23:

Hence wherever the antithesis is cancelled or deranged, the metamorphosis becomes irregular. For what is disease even but metamorphosis?—_Remark of the Original._

Footnote 24:

From this point onwards, there are, as in the Outlines, additions in notes (similar to the few that have already been admitted into the text in brackets []). They are excerpted from a MS. copy of the author’s.

Footnote 25:

The first postulate of natural science is an antithesis in the pure identity of Nature. This antithesis must be thought quite purely, and not with any other substrate besides that of activity; for it is the condition of all substrate. The person who cannot think activity or opposition without a substrate, cannot philosophize at all. For all philosophizing goes only to the deduction of a substrate.

Footnote 26:

The phenomena of electricity show the scheme of nature oscillating between productivity and product. This condition of oscillation or change, attractive and repulsive force, is the real condition of formation.

Footnote 27:

For it is the only thing that is given us to derive all other things from.

Footnote 28:

The whole of the uncancelled antithesis of _A_ is carried over to _B_. But again, it cannot entirely cancel itself in _B_, and is therefore carried over to _C_. The antithesis in _C_ is therefore maintained by _B_, but only in so far as _A_ maintains the antithesis which is the condition of _B_.

Footnote 29:

That is, distribution exists only, when the antithesis in a product is not absolutely but only relatively cancelled.

Footnote 30:

The struggle towards indifference attains the preponderance over the antithesis, at a greater or less distance from the body which exercises the distribution, (as, for example, at a certain distance, the action by distribution, which an electric or magnetic body exercises upon another body, appears as cancelled.) The difference in this distance is the ground of the difference of world-bodies in one and the same system, inasmuch, namely, as one part of the matter is subjected to indifference more than the rest. Since, therefore, the condition of all product is difference, difference must again arise at every step as the source of all existence, but must also be thought as again cancelled. By this continual reproduction and resuscitation creation takes place anew at every step.

Footnote 31:

It is precisely zero to which Nature continually strives to revert, and to which it would revert, if the antithesis were ever cancelled. Let us suppose the original condition of Nature = 0 (want of reality). Now zero can certainly be thought as dividing itself into 1 - 1 (for this = 0); but if we posit that this division as not infinite (as it is in the infinite series 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...), then Nature will as it were oscillate continually between zero and unity—and this is precisely its condition.

Footnote 32:

Baader on the Pythagorean Square. 1798. (_Remark of the original._)

Footnote 33:

Except by the thoughtful author of a review of my work on the world-soul, in the Würzburg _Gelehrte Anzeiger_, the only review of that work that has hitherto come under my notice. (_Remark of the original._)

Footnote 34:

It is here taken for granted that what we call the quality of bodies, and what we are wont to regard as something homogeneous, and the ground of all homogeneity is really only an expression for a cancelled difference.

Footnote 35:

In the M.S. copy the last part of this sentence reads as follows: The construction of quality ought necessarily to be capable of experimental proof, by the recancelling the identity, and of the phenomena which accompany it.

Footnote 36:

Every body must be thought as reproduced at every step—and therefore also every total product.

Footnote 37:

The _universal_, however, is never perceived, for the simple reason that it is universal.

Footnote 38:

Whereby what was said above is confirmed,—that falling toward the centre is a compound motion.

Footnote 39:

The reciprocal cancelling of opposite motions.

Footnote 40:

Or the object is seen in the first stage of becoming, or of transition from difference to indifference. The phenomena of magnetism even serve, so to speak, as an impulse, to transport us to the standpoint beyond the product, which is necessary in order to the construction of the product.

Footnote 41:

There will result the opposite effect—a _negative_ attraction, that is, repulsion. Repulsion and attraction stand to each other as positive and negative magnitudes. Repulsion is only negative attraction—attraction only negative repulsion; as soon, therefore, as the maximum of attraction is reached, it passes over into its opposite—into repulsion.

Footnote 42:

If we designate the factors as + and - electricity, then, in the second stage, + electricity had a relative preponderance over - electricity.

Footnote 43:

If no longer the individual factors of the two products, but the whole products themselves are absolutely opposed to each other.

Footnote 44:

For product is something wherein antithesis cancels itself, but it cancels itself only through indifference of gravity. When, therefore, two products are opposed to each other, the indifference in each _individually_ must be absolutely cancelled, and the whole products must gravitate towards each other.

Footnote 45:

In the electric process, the whole product is not active, but only the one factor of the product, which has the relative preponderance over the other. In the chemical process in which the _whole product_ is active, it follows that the indifference of the whole product must be cancelled.

Footnote 46:

We have therefore the following scheme of the dynamical process:

First stage: Unity of the product—magnetism.

Second stage: Duplicity of the products—electricity.

Third stage: Unity of the products—chemical process.

Footnote 47:

The conclusions which may be deduced from this construction of dynamical phenomena are partly anticipated in what goes before. The following may serve for further explanation:

The chemical process, for example, in its highest perfection is a process of combustion. Now I have already shown on another occasion, that the condition of light in the body undergoing combustion is nothing else but the maximum of its positive electrical condition. For it is always the positively electrical condition that is also the combustible. Might not, then, this coexistence of the phenomenon of light with the chemical process in its highest perfection give us information about the ground of every phenomenon of light in Nature?

What happens, then, in the chemical process? Two whole products gravitate towards each other. The _indifference_ of the _individual_ is therefore _absolutely_ cancelled. This absolute cancelling of indifference puts the whole body into the condition of light, just as the partial in the electric process puts it into a partial condition of light. Therefore, also the light—what seems to stream to us from the sun—is nothing else but the phenomenon of indifference cancelled at every step. For as gravity never ceases to act, its condition—antithesis—must be regarded as springing up again at every step. We should thus have in light a continual, visible appearing of gravitation, and it would be explained why, in the system of worlds, it is exactly those bodies which are the principal seat of gravity that are also the principal source of light. We should then, also, have an explanation of the connection in which the action of light stands to that of gravitation.

The manifold effects of light on the deviations of the magnetic needle, on atmospheric electricity, and on organic nature, would be explained by the very fact that light is the phenomenon of indifference continually cancelled—therefore, the phenomenon of the dynamical process continually rekindled. It is, therefore, one antithesis that prevails in all dynamical phenomena—in those of magnetism, electricity and light; for example, the antithesis, which is the condition of the electrical phenomena must already enter into the first construction of matter. For all bodies are certainly electrical.

Footnote 48:

Or rather, conversely, the more combustible is always also the positively electric; whence it is manifest that the body which burns has merely reached the maximum of + electricity.

Footnote 49:

And indeed it is so. What then is the absolute incombustible? Doubtless, simply that wherewith everything else burns—oxygen. But it is precisely this absolutely incombustible oxygen that is the principle of negative electricity, and thus we have a confirmation of what I have already stated in the Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, viz. that oxygen is a principle of a negative kind, and therefore the representative, as it were, of the power of attraction; whereas phlogiston, or, what is the same thing, positive electricity, is the representative of the positive, or of the force of repulsion. There has long been a theory that the magnetic, electric, chemical, and, finally, even the organic phenomena, are interwoven into one great interdependent whole. This must be established. It is certain that the connection of electricity with the process of combustion may be shown by numerous experiments. One of the most recent of these that has come to my knowledge I will cite. It occurs in Scherer’s _Journal of Chemistry_. If a Leyden jar is filled with iron filings, and repeatedly charged and discharged, and if, after the lapse of some time, this iron is taken out and placed upon an isolator—paper, for example—it begins to get hot, becomes incandescent, and changes into an oxide of iron. This experiment deserves to be frequently repeated and more closely examined—it might readily lead to something new.

This great interdependence, which a scientific system of physics must establish, extends over the whole of Nature. It must, therefore, once established, spread a new light over the History of the whole of Nature. Thus, for example, it is certain that all geology must start from terrestrial magnetism. But terrestrial electricity must again be determined by magnetism. The connection of North and South with magnetism is shown even by the irregular movements of the magnetic needle. But again, with universal electricity, which, no less than gravity and magnetism, has its indifference point—the universal process of combustion and all volcanic phenomena stand connected.

Therefore, it is certain that there is one chain going from universal magnetism down to the volcanic phenomena. Still these are all only scattered experiments.

In order to make this interdependence _fully_ evident, we need the central phenomenon, or central experiment, of which Bacon speaks oracularly—(I mean the experiment wherein all those functions of matter, magnetism, electricity, &c., so run together in one phenomenon that the _individual_ function is distinguishable)—proving that the one does not lose itself immediately in the other, but that each can be exhibited separately—an experiment which, when it is discovered, will stand in the same relation to the _whole_ of Nature, as galvanism does to organic nature. [Compare this with the discourse on Faraday’s latest discovery, (1832,) p. 15. Complete Works, 1st Div., last vol.]

Footnote 50:

Proof—All dynamical phenomena are phenomena of transition from difference to indifference. But it is in this very transition that matter is primarily constructed.

Footnote 51:

In the already mentioned discourse on Faraday’s latest discovery, the author cites the passage (p. 75, original edition,) as well as § 56 sq. of the _General View of the Dynamical Process_ (likewise written _before_ the invention of the voltaic pile,) as a proof of his having _anticipated_ the discoveries which proved the _unity_ of the electrical and the chemical antithesis, and of the similar connection subsisting between magnetic and chemical phenomena. (See also Remark 2, p. 216.)

Footnote 52:

Every individual is an expression of the whole of Nature. As the existence of the _single_ organic individual rests on that scale, so does the whole of Nature. Organic nature maintains the whole wealth and variety of her products only by continually changing the relation of those three functions.—In like manner inorganic Nature brings forth the whole wealth of her product, only by changing the relation of those three functions of matter _ad infinitum_; for magnetism, electricity, and chemical process are the functions of matter generally, and on that ground alone are they categories for the construction of all matter. This fact, that those three factors are not phenomena of special kinds of matter, but _functions of all matter_ universally, gives its real, and its innermost sense to dynamical physics, which, by this circumstance alone, rises far above all other kinds of physics.

Footnote 53:

That is, the organic product can be thought only as subsisting under the hostile pressure of an external nature.

Footnote 54:

The chemical process, too, has not substrateless or simple factors; it has products for factors.

Footnote 55:

The same deduction is already given in the Outlines, p. 163.—What the dynamical action is, which according to the Outlines is also the cause of irritability, is now surely clear enough. It is the _universal action_ which is everywhere conditioned by the cancelment of indifference, and which at last tends towards intussusception (indifference of products) when it is not continually prevented, as it is in the process of irritation. (_Remark of the original._)

Footnote 56:

The abyss of forces, into which we here look down, opens with the one question; In the first construction of our earth, what can have been the ground of the fact that no genesis of new individuals is possible upon it, otherwise than under the condition of opposite powers? Compare an utterance of Kant on this subject, in his Anthropology. (_Remark of the original._)

Footnote 57:

The two factors can never be _one_, but must be separated into different products—in order that thus the difference may be permanent.

Footnote 58:

In the product, indifference of the first and second powers is arrived at (for example, by irritation itself an origin of _mass_ [i. e. indifference of the first order] and even _chemical products_ [i. e. indifference of the second order] are reached), but indifference of the third power can never be reached, because it is a contradictory idea. (_Remark of the original._)

Footnote 59:

The product is productive only from the fact of its being a product of the third power. But the idea of a productive product is itself a contradiction. What is productivity is not product, and what is product is not productivity. Therefore a product of the third power is itself a contradictory idea. From this even is manifest what an extremely artificial condition life is—wrenched, as it were, from Nature—subsisting against her will.

Footnote 60:

Nothing shows more clearly the contradictions out of which life arises, and the fact that it is altogether only a heightened condition of _ordinary_ natural forces, than the contradiction of Nature in what she tries, but tries in vain, to reach through the _sexes_.—Nature _hates_ sex, and where it does arise, it arises against her will. The diremption into sexes is an inevitable fate, with which, after she is once organic, she must put up, and which she can never overcome.—By this very hatred of diremption she finds herself involved in a contradiction, inasmuch as what is odious to her she is compelled to develop in the most careful manner, and to lead to the summit of existence, as if she did it on purpose; whereas she is always striving only for a return into the identity of the genus, which, however, is chained to the (never to be cancelled) duplicity of the sexes, as to an inevitable condition. That she develops the individual only from compulsion, and for the sake of the genus, is manifest from this, that wherever in a genus she _seems_ desirous of maintaining the individual longer (though this is never really the case), she finds the genus becoming more uncertain, because she must hold the sexes farther asunder, and, as it were, make them flee from each other. In this region of Nature, the decay of the individual is not so visibly rapid as it is where the sexes are nearer to each other, as in the case of the rapidly withering flower, in which, from its very birth, they are enclosed in a calix as in a bride-bed, but in which, for that very cause, the _genus_ is better _secured_.

Nature is the _laziest of animals_, and curses diremption, because it imposes upon her the necessity of activity; she is active only in order to rid herself of this necessity. The opposites must for ever shun, in order for ever to seek, each other; and for ever seek, in order never to find, each other; it is only in _this_ contradiction that the ground of all the activity of Nature lies. (_Remark of the original._)

Footnote 61:

Its effect upon the power of reproduction (as well as the reaction of particular conditions of the latter power upon galvanic phenomena) is less studied still than might be needful and useful.—Vide Outlines, p. 177.—(_Remark of the original._)

Footnote 62:

Compare above Remark, p. 197. (_Remark of the original._)

Footnote 63:

That it is therefore the same nature, which, by the same forces, produces organic phenomena, and the universal phenomena of Nature, and that these forces are in a heightened conditioned in organic nature.

ANALYSIS OF HEGEL’S ÆSTHETICS. [Translated from the French of M. CH. BENARD, by J. A. MARTLING.]

II. SCULPTURE.—Architecture fashions and disposes of the masses of inert nature according to geometric laws, and it thus succeeds in presenting only a vague and incomplete symbol of the thought. Its [thought’s] progress consists in detaching itself from physical existence, and in expressing spirit in a manner more in conformity with its nature. The first step which art takes in this career does not yet indicate the return of spirit upon itself, which would render necessary a wholly spiritual mode of expression, and signs as immaterial as thought; but spirit appears under a corporeal, organized living form. What art represents is the animate, living body, and above all the human body, with which the soul is completely identified. Such is the _rôle_ and the place which belong to Sculpture.

It still resembles _architecture_ in this, that it fashions extended and solid material; but it is distinguished from it in this, that this material, in its hands, ceases to be foreign to spirit. The corporeal form blends with it, and becomes its living image. Compared to poetry, it seems at first to have the advantage over it of representing objects under their natural and visible form, while speech expresses ideas only by sounds; but this plastic clearness is more than compensated by the superiority of language as a means of expression. Speech reveals the innermost thoughts with a clearness altogether different from the lines of the figure, the countenance, and the attitudes of the body; further, it shows man in action—active in virtue of his ideas and his passions; it retraces the various phases of a complete event. Sculpture represents neither the inmost sentiments of the soul, nor its definite passions. It presents the individual character only in general, and to such an extent as the body can express in a given moment, without movement, without living action, without development. It yields also, in this respect, to painting, which, by the employment of color and the effects of light, acquires more of naturalness and truth, and, above all, a great superiority of expression. Thus, one might think at first that Sculpture would do well to add to its own proper means those of painting. This is a grave error; for that abstract form, deprived of color, which the statuary employs is not an imperfection in it—it is the limit which this art places upon itself.

Each art represents a degree, a particular form of the beautiful, a moment of the development of spirit, and expresses it excellently. To Sculpture it belongs to represent the perfection of the bodily form, plastic beauty, life, soul, spirit animating a body. If it should desire to transcend this limit, it would fail entirely; the use of foreign means would alter the purity of its works.

It is with art here as with science; each science has its object, peculiar, limited, abstract; its circle, in which it moves, and where it is free. Geometry studies extension, and extension only; arithmetic, number; jurisprudence, the right; &c. Allow any one to encroach upon the others, and to aim at universality; you introduce into its domain confusion, obscurity, real imperfection. They develop differently different objects; clearness, perfection, and even liberty, are to be purchased only at this price.

Art, too, has many phases; to each a distinct art corresponds. Sculpture stops at form, which it fashions according to its peculiar laws; to add color thereto is to alter, to disfigure its object. Thereby it preserves its character, its functions, its independence; it represents the material, corporeal side, of which architecture gives only a vague and imperfect symbol. It is given to painting, to substitute for this real form, a simple visible appearance, which then admits color, by joining to it the effects of perspective, of light and shade. But Sculpture ought to respect its proper limits, to confine itself to representing the corporeal form as an expression of the individual spirit, of the soul, divested of passion and definite sentiment. In so doing, it can so much the better content itself with the human form in itself, in which the soul is, as it were, spread over all points.

Such is also the reason why Sculpture does not represent spirit in action, in a succession of movements, having a determined end, nor engaged in those enterprises and actions which manifest a character. It prefers to present it in a calm attitude, or when the movement and the grouping indicate only the commencement of action. Through this very thing, that it presents to our eyes spirit absorbed in the corporeal form, designed to manifest it in its entirety, there is lacking the essential point where the expression of the soul centres itself, the glance of the eye. Neither has it any need of the magic of colors, which, by the fineness and variety of their shadings, are fitted to express all the richness of particular traits of character, and to manifest the soul, with all the emotions which agitate it. Sculpture ought not to admit materials of which it has no need at the step where it stops. The image fashioned by it, is of a single color; it employs primitive matter, the most simple, uniform, unicolored: marble, ivory, gold, brass, the metals. It is this which the Greeks had the ability perfectly to seize and hold.

After these considerations upon the general character of Sculpture, and its connections with other arts, Hegel approaches the more special study and the theory of this art. He considers it—1st, in its principle; 2d, in its ideal; 3d, in the materials which it employs, as well as in its various modes of representation and the principal epochs of its historic development.

We are compelled to discard a crowd of interesting details upon each of these points, and to limit ourselves to general ideas.

1. To seize fully the principle of Sculpture and the essence of this art, it is necessary to examine, in the first place, what constitutes the _content_ of its representations, then the corporeal _form_ which should express it; last, to see how, from the perfect accord of the idea and the form, results the _ideal_ of Sculpture as it has been realized in Greek art.

The essential content of the representations of Sculpture is, as has been said, spirit incarnate in a corporeal form. Now, not every situation of the soul is fitted to be thus manifested. Action, movement, determined passion, can not be represented under a material form; that ought to show to us the soul diffused through the entire body, through all its members. Thus, what Sculpture represents is the individual spirit, or, according to the formula of the author, the spiritual individuality in its essence, with its general, universal, eternal character; spirit elevated above the inclinations, the caprices, the transient impressions which flow in upon the soul, without profoundly penetrating it. This entire phase of the personal principle ought to be excluded from the representations of Sculpture. The content of its works is the essence, the substantial, true, invariable part of character, in opposition to what is accidental and transient.

Now, this state of spirit, not yet particularized, unalterable, self-centered, calm, is the divine in opposition to finite existence, which is developed in the midst of accidents and contingencies, the exhibition of which this world of change and diversity presents us.

According to this, Sculpture should represent the divine in itself, in its infinite calm, and its eternal, immovable sublimity, without the discord of action and situation. If, afterward, affecting a more determinate mode, it represents something human in form and character, it ought still to thrust back all which is accidental and transient; to admit only the fixed, invariable side, the ground of character. This fixed element is what Sculpture should express as alone constituting the true individuality; it represents its personages as beings complete and perfect in themselves, in an absolute repose freed from all foreign influence. The eternal in gods and men is what it is called upon to offer to our contemplation in perfect and unalterable clearness.

Such is the idea which constitutes the essential content of the works of Sculpture. What is the _form_ under which this idea should appear? We have seen, it is the body, the corporeal form. But the only form worthy to represent the spirit, is the _human form_. This form, in its turn, ought to be represented, not in that wherein it approximates the animal form, but in its ideal beauty; that is to say, free, harmonious, reflecting the spirit in the features which characterize it, in all its proportions, its purity, the regularity of its lines, by its mien, its postures, etc. It should express spirit in its calmness, its serenity—both soul and life, but above all, spirit.

These principles serve to determine the ideal of beauty under the physical form.

We must take care, in the works of Sculpture, not to confound this manner of looking at the perfect correspondence of the soul and bodily forms, with the study of the lineaments of the countenance, etc. The science of Gall, or of Lavater, which studies the correspondence of characters with certain lineaments of face or forms of head, has nothing in common with the artistic studies of the works of the statuary. These seem, it is true, to invite us to this study; but its point of view is wholly different; it is that of the harmonious and necessary accord of forms, from which beauty results. The ground of Sculpture excludes, moreover, precisely all the peculiarities of individual character to which the physiognomist attaches himself. The ideal form manifests only the fixed, regular, invariable, although living and individual type. It is then forbidden to the artist, as far as regards the physiognomy, to represent the most expressive and determinate lineaments of the countenance; for, beside looks, properly so-called, the expression of the physiognomy includes many things which are reflected transiently upon the face, in the countenance or the carriage, the smile and the glance. Sculpture should interdict to itself things so transient, and confine itself to the permanent traits of the expression of the spirit; in a word, it should incarnate in the human form the spiritual principle in its nature, at once general and individual, but not yet particularized. To maintain these two terms in just harmony, is the problem which falls to statuary, and which the Greeks have resolved.

The consequences to be deduced from these principles are the following:

In the first place, Sculpture is, more than the other arts, suited to the ideal, and this because of the perfect adaptation of the form to the idea; in the second place, it constitutes the centre of classic art, which represents this perfect accord of the idea and the sensuous form. It alone, in fact, offers to us those ideal figures, pure from all admixture—the perfect expression of physical beauty. It realizes, before our eyes, the union of the human and divine, under the corporeal form. The sense of plastic beauty was given above all to the Greeks, and this trait appears everywhere, not only in Greek art and Greek mythology, but in the real world, in historic personages: Pericles, Phidias, Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Sophocles, Thucydides, those artistic natures, artists of themselves—characters grand and free, supported upon the basis of a strong individuality, worthy of being placed beside the immortal gods which Greek Sculpture represents.

2. After having determined the principle of Sculpture, Hegel applies it to the study of the _beau ideal_, as the master-pieces of Greek art have realized it. He examines successively and in detail the character and conditions of the _ideal form_ in the different parts of the human body, _the face_, _the looks_, _the bearing_, _the dress_. Upon all these points he faithfully follows Winckelmann, recapitulates him, and constantly cites him. The philosopher meanwhile preserves his originality; it consists in the manner in which he systematizes that which is simply described in the History of Art, and in giving throughout, the reason of that which the great critic, with his exquisite and profound sense, has so admirably seized and undeniably proved, but without being able to unfold the theory of it. The subject gathers, henceforth, new interest from this explication. We may cite, in particular, the description of the Greek profile, which, in the hands of the philosopher, takes the character of a geometric theorem. It is at the same time an example which demonstrates unanswerably the absolute character of physical beauty. The beauty of these lines has nothing arbitrary; they indicate the superiority of spirit, and the pre-eminence of the forms which express it above those which are suited to the functions of the animal nature. What he afterwards says of the looks, of the bearing, of the postures, of the antique dress compared with the modern dress, and of its ideal character, presents no less interest. But all these details, where the author shows much of discrimination, of genius even, and spirit, escape in the analysis. The article where he describes the particular attributes and the accessories which distinguish the personages of Greek Sculpture, although in great part borrowed also from Winckelmann, shows a spirit familiarized with the knowledge of the works of antiquity.

3. The chapter devoted to the different _modes_ of representation of the materials of Sculpture, and of its historic development, is equally full of just and delicate observations. All this is not alone from a theorist, but from a connoisseur and an enlightened judge. The appreciation of the _materials of Sculpture_, and the comparison of their æsthetic value, furnish also to the author some very ingenious remarks upon a subject which seems scarcely susceptible of interest. Finally, in a rapid sketch, Hegel retraces the _historic development_ of Sculpture, Egyptian Statuary, Etruscan art, the school of Ægina, are characterized in strokes remarkable for precision.

Arrived at _Christian Sculpture_, without disputing the richness and the ability which it has displayed in its works in wood, in stone, etc., and its excellence in respect to expression, Hegel maintains with reason, that the Christian principle is little favorable to Sculpture; and that in wishing to express the Christian sentiment in its profundity and its vivacity, it passes its proper limits. “The self-inspection of the soul, the moral suffering, the torments of body and of spirit, martyrdom and penitence, death and resurrection, the mystic depth, the love and out-gushing of the heart, are wholly unsuited to be represented by Sculpture, which requires calmness, serenity of spirit, and in expression, harmony of forms.” Thus, Sculpture here remains rather an ornament of architecture; it sculptures saints, bas reliefs upon the niches and porches of churches, turrets, etc. From another side, through arabesques and bas reliefs, it approximates the principle of painting, by giving too much expression to its figures, or by making portraits in marble and in stone. Sculpture comes back to its true principle, at the epoch of the _renaissance_, by taking for models the beautiful forms of Greek art.

A DIALOGUE ON MUSIC. By EDWARD SOBOLEWSKI.

Q. Tell me what is good music?

A. Concerning tastes—all fine natures—not the “fair sex” only, possess, as Bossuet says, an instinct for harmony of forms, colors, style and tones, especially for the latter, because the nerves of the ear being more exposed, are consequently more sensitive.

Discords massed together without system, produce a more disagreeable effect than ill-assorted colors; and on the other hand, the etherial beauty of tone-poetry excites the soul more powerfully than the splendor of a Titian or Correggio.

Q. This “instinct” and “taste,” are they one and the same?

A. To a certain degree only—though many amateurs, critics, musicians, and even composers, have had no other guide than a fine instinct.

Q. You speak as Pistocchi to the celebrated Farinelli: “A singer needs a hundred things, but a good voice is ninety-nine of them—the hundredth is the cultivation of the voice.”

A. The instinct of a delicate, sensitive organization, may go far, but I think the hundredth thing is also necessary; therefore, one possessed of the finest voice, but uncultivated, will sing sometimes badly, sometimes pretty well, but never quite perfectly for a real judge.

So it is with taste. Depending on natural gifts alone, without cultivation—you will be sometimes right—as often wrong. In short, your taste is good, if you find pleasure in those works only which are composed according to the principles of art; on the contrary, your taste is bad, false, corrupt, if you find pleasure in music full of faults and defects.

Q. Therefore, to be correct in taste, I must know the principles of the art; I must know the rules of “Harmony, Rhythm and Form,” and perhaps much more. Why, G. Weber has written three large volumes on “Harmony” alone. No, it is too difficult and takes too much time.

A. Yet it is not so difficult as it seems. To understand music rightly, nothing is necessary but the knowledge of two keys—major and minor; two kinds of time—common and triple—one simple chord and two cadences.

Q. But Rhythm, Form?

A. Form is Rhythm, and Rhythm is time.

Q. Let us begin then with the keys, you speak of two only—major and minor—but I have heard something of Ambroseanic, Gregoryanic, Glareanic and Greek keys, wherein are composed the beautiful and sublime compositions of Palestrina, Allegri, Lotti, that are performed annually during Passion-week in the church of St. Peter, at Rome.

A. Well, if you like to go so far back, we will speak about Ambrose, Gregory, Glareanus, but there are no such things as “Greek” keys.

The knowledge we have of the music of the Greeks, is too slight and imperfect to enable us to assert positively anything concerning it; and as nothing important or necessary to modern art is involved, we may be content to let the music of the ancients rest in the obscurity which surrounds it.

With the first Christians, who hated everything which came from the temples of the heathens, arose our music.

Their religious songs were a production of the new soul which came into them with Jesus Christ, and are the foundation of our great edifice of art, as it now exists. In the year 385, Saint Ambrose introduced four keys, D, E, F, G; Pope Gregory, in 597, added four others to these, and named the four of Ambrose, “authentic moods,” and his four, which began on every fifth of the first four, “plagalic.” In these eight keys, without sharps or flats, are composed the liturgic songs of the Roman church, called “Gregorian chants.” They are written in notes of equal value, without Rhythm or Metre, and are sung in unison with loud voice. Glareanus added to those eight keys, two more, A and C, with their plagal moods. To distinguish more clearly, some one called the key beginning with “D,” Doric, “E,” Phrygic, “F,” Lydic, “G,” Mixolydic, “A,” Æolic, and “B,” Tonic. These names are all we have borrowed from Greece.

Palestrina, the preserver of our art, wrote his compositions in these keys, and for the highest purity of harmony, rhythmical beauty, sublime simplicity, and deep religious feeling, his works are still unrivalled.

Q. Why don’t you compose in the old keys and in Palestrina’s style?

A. They are used sometimes by Handel in his Oratorios, by Sebastian Bach in his fugues for organ and piano. Later, Beethoven has written an Andante in the Lydic mood in his string-quartette (A minor). I myself have composed the first chorus of Vinvela, in the Mixolydic mood, and in Comala, the song to the moon, in the Doric mood; but Handel, Bach, Beethoven, and myself, have written in our own style, and never imitated Palestrina’s. Men in similar situations, only, have similar ideas. All older works of music utter a language which we yet understand, but cannot speak. We feel its deep innermost accents, but we cannot tune the chords of our soul to that pitch which harmonizes in every respect with that feeling. Palestrina’s music sounds like that of another world; it is all quite simple; mostly common chords, here and there only a chord of the sixth; and always an irresistible charm.

This riddle is partially explained, if we observe how Palestrina selected the tones for the different parts in his choruses. Let us take the third, c—e; e. g. let the soprano and the alto sing this third, and you will have the same harmonic sound that the piano or organ gives. But let the tenor sing one of these tones, and soprano or alto the other, and the effect will be very different, although the tones are the same. Palestrina knew not only the particular sound of every tone in every voice, but also the effect which such or such combinations would produce.

This mystery is taught neither by a singing school, nor by a theory of composition, and few composers of to-day know it. How great and beautiful is Beethoven’s solemn mass in D! What an effect would it make, had Beethoven possessed the same knowledge of voices that he had of instruments? Now, unfortunately, one often overpowers the others, and the enjoyment of this composition will be always greater for the eye than the ear.

We will now go back to the old keys. These are taken from the music produced at that time, as our two keys, major and minor, are taken from the melodies of later times.

This seems very simple to us, but not to our great theorists. Gottfried Weber takes two keys, major c, d, e, f, g, a, b, c, and minor a, b, c, d, e, f, g _sharp_, the same rising and falling equally.

Hauptmann, the first teacher of harmony in the Conservatory of Music at Leipsic, says in his book, The Nature of Harmony and Metre, page 30—“The key is formed, when the common chord (c, e, g), after having gone through the subdominant-chord (f, a, c), and dominant-chord (g, b, d), has come in opposition with itself; this opposition coupled together, becomes _unity_ and the _key_.” He finds in our music three keys, and names them, the major, the minor, and the minor major.

R. Wagner recognizes no key at all; for him exists a chromatic scale only. He says: “The scale is the most closely united, the most intimately related family among tones.” He does not like to stay long in one key, and takes the continuous change of keys for a quality of the music of the future; therefore, he finds in Beethoven’s last symphony, in the melody to Schiller’s poem, a going _back_, because it has scarcely any modulation.

We will not be so lavish with keys as Hauptmann, nor so economical as R. Wagner, neither are we of Weber’s opinion. We find in C major the old Glareanic key, called also “Ionic;” in our A minor of this day, a “_mixtum compositum_” of several old keys; it begins as the “Æolic” a, b, c, d, e, f, takes then its seventh tone, g _sharp_, from the Lydic, transposed a third higher; uses sometimes also the sixth of the last, accepts lastly the character of the Phrygic, transposed a fourth higher, and brings thus the tone b _flat_ into its scale, which has been already the subject of much discussion, although that has never succeeded in throwing this tone out of many melodies in A minor. We have melodies which are the pure A minor from the beginning to the end, wherein we find f _sharp_ and f _natural_, g and g _sharp_, b and b _flat_, and the last oftener than f _sharp_; therefore, we must build the scale of A minor, and its harmony, according to those different tones; it will

be a, {b, c, d, e, {f, {g _sharp_, a, {b _flat_, {f _sharp_, {g _natural_.

Let us proceed. The two kinds of time are common and triple. The rhythm of the first is—__, that of the second—__ __. The accentuation of subdivisions is governed by the same law. It makes no difference whether a piece of music is written in 2|3 or 2|4, or even 2|8 time; but good composers of music, writing in 2|4 time, intend the same to be of lighter rendition than those composed in 2|2 time, etc.

Concerning harmony, there is one chord only—all other harmonies are passing notes, inversions, prolongations, suspensions or retardations of chord-tones, or from sharped and diminished intervals. Harmony is a connection of different melodies. Before chords were known, they descanted, that is, they tried to sing to a melody, commonly a sacred hymn, called _cantus firmus_, different harmonical tones, and named this part, _Descant_; Italian, _soprano_; French, _Le dessus_. Later there was added to the tenor (which performed the _cantus firmus_) a higher part, named _alto_, and lastly, a lower part was added called _bass_. These four parts, though each melodious and independent in itself, harmonized closely with each other, all striving for the same aim.

Even to-day we must necessarily call such music good, wherein every voice acts independently of all others, and still in harmony with the same, in order to express the reigning feeling, and sustain the various shades in contrast to non-acting and lifeless trabants, which may be strikingly seen in many compositions, particularly in four-part songs for male voices, by Abt, Gumbert, Kücken, etc., wherein three voices (_Brummstimmen_) accompany the fourth with a growling sound escaping their closed lips.

The two cadences or musical phrases are the cadence on the tonic and the cadence on the dominant. The cadence on the tonic, consisting of the chord in the dominant, followed by that of the tonic, concludes the sense of the musical phrase, and is called “perfect” when the tonic is in the highest and lowest part. It corresponds to a period in language. The cadence on the dominant consists of the tonic, or the chord of the second or fourth going to the dominant. The cadence of the dominant suspends the sense of the musical phrase without concluding it. This is likewise the case with the cadence on the tonic, if the tonic is not in the highest and lowest part.

Q. You say nothing of the great mistake wherein two fifths or octaves follow each other?

A. Of course, the true nature of the proper arrangement of parts excludes all direct fifths.

It is considered by the new school “an exploded idea.” Mozart himself made use of fifths in the first finale of Don Giovanni.

Q. I have heard something of these fifths, but was told it was “irony,” being contained in the minuet which Mozart composed for “country musicians”?

A. You also find octaves in S. Bach’s “Matthew Passion,” p. 25, “On the cross,” where surely no ironical meaning was intended.

Q. Do you not say anything in regard to form?

A. Form is an “exploded idea” also. The composers of the new school construct their vocal music so as to let the poem govern the music in relation to metre and form; in their instrumental compositions, the form is governed by phantasy.

Q. But what do you understand by a symphony, sonata or overture?

A. I must again go back, in order to explain this properly.

Revolutions often beat the path for new ideas. Palestrina towers great and unattainable in his compositions of sacred music, which breathe and express the purest catholicism.

But a Luther, Zwingli, and others came, followed soon by Handel and Bach, who, about the middle of the eighteenth century, created a music full of freshness, primitiveness and transporting power, which lived and died with the reformers.

The three grand-masters, Palestrina, Handel and Bach, equal, but do not rival each other. We cannot judge them for the different sentiments they indulged in. The philosophers may settle which is the best religion, for to the necessity of one they all agree, but music cannot be chained by dogmas. Heaven is an orb, whose centre is everywhere. Palestrina’s music is the language of the south, Handel’s and Bach’s that of the north. Though one sun illumes both lands—though one ether spans both, yet in the south the sun is milder, the ether purer. Flowers which there grow in wild abundance, the north must obtain by culture.

We must think at our work.

This necessity of thought is apparent in religion, language and art, and can be seen most clearly in the greatest works of the German grand-masters, in Bach’s “Matthew Passion,” and Handel’s “Israel.”

Sebastian Bach’s astonishing dexterity in thematical works is the reason that even unto this day we do not find a symphony or overture appropriate for a concert, of which the single motive forming the principal thought of the movement is not worked up on the basis which he constructed with such deep knowledge and skill.

To him we must retrace our steps, in order to perceive the true nature of our instrumental music, for we are as little masters of the course of our ideas, as of the circulation of the blood in our veins. Centuries have passed, and although the first great instrumental-piece—the overture—was a French production, (Lulli was the first master in this _genre_ of art,) yet Bach and Handel impressed the first decided stamp upon it.

Later, the overture was supplanted by the symphony, for the reason that it was of easier composition and execution than the former. The overture consisted of a _grave_, followed by a _fugue_. The symphony was composed somewhat in the style of a _fugue_ and that of the lively dances of that time.

Shortly after this period, the dance-music was thought no longer fashionable, and was succeeded by two _Allegros_, with an _Andante_ or _Largo_ placed between them.

Father Hayden felt hurt at the complete abandonment of dance-music, and again adopted the minuet. Mozart also preferred the grave and majestic dancing-step of his ancestors, the minuet. But Beethoven’s impetuous and passionate nature scoffed at the slow and gracious movements of the minuet, and revelled instead in the wild Scherzo, or in the capricious demonical leaps of the old _Passepied_. Dark and mighty forms rose before the gloomy vision of his inner-man, acting powerfully upon the phantasy, and wherever they met this volcanic fire, always leaving a deep impression.

Two comets ushered in the existence of our century; the one revolutionized the exterior—the other, the interior world. Especially were the young generation touched by the electric sparks of their rays.

Napoleon’s battles were repeated a thousand times in the nurseries with lead and paper soldiers. Beethoven’s melodies agitated the souls of the young generation in their working and dreaming hours. When the shoes of the child became too small they were thrown aside; the lead and paper soldiers shared the same fate; but the melodious tones grew with the soul to more and more powerful chords. Beethoven’s star shone brighter, while Napoleon’s was already fading. Then we heard that Beethoven intended to destroy his great symphony called “Eroica.” Napoleon, the consul, to whom Beethoven designed to dedicate this great work, had sunk to Napoleon the Emperor, and Beethoven felt ashamed.

Majesty of rank is often devoid of the grace and majesty of the soul. The chord e^b, g, b^b wherewith the bass solemnly introduced the third symphony (Eroica), and his inversions in the Scherzo b^b, e^b, g, b^b, and in the last movement e, b, b, e, this echo of the Marseillaise suited no longer and should perish with it. Only then, when fate, in the icy deserts of Russia, clasped the grand General in its iron grip, and never loosened its hold until it had crushed him, did the composer of the Eroica comprehend that in the _marcia funebre_ contained in this symphony, he had spoken in prophetic voice. The prophecy contained in the last movement was destined to be fulfilled in the latter half of this century.

As Beethoven poured out his soul in a prophetic epopee, so did Mozart embody his genius in his Don Giovanni. But as the sublime always acts more powerfully upon youth than knowledge and beauty, so likewise was the success of Beethoven greater than that of Mozart in this century. Altogether Mozart is generally appreciated better in riper years. “_La delicatesse du gout est une première nuance de la satiété._”

Mendelssohn, whose compositions ever flowed smoothly and quietly, understood well how to tune his harmonica to Mozart’s tuning-fork.

Q. You represent Beethoven as grave and solemn, and yet it appears he was not a great despiser of dances. Take, for instance, his A major symphony. Lively to overflowing, almost mad with frantic joy, is the first movement. Equal to a double quick-step, the last, about as the peasants of Saxony perform their dances, the Scherzo gay; and in the Andante, he even calls upon a lot of old bachelors and maiden-ladies, with their hoop accompaniment, to fall in and execute their _tours_?

A. What opposite views are often taken of the same thing by different minds! In the andante, in which you find so much humor, Marx observes the sober view of life, at first the peaceful and untroubled step, but growing ever more and more painful, and suffering, fighting the battle of life; yet, be this as it may, such music is ever successful, even in spite of the biting criticism of Maria v. Weber, and the ferocious attacks of Oulibischeff.

Q. A good dance is always successful, I believe?

A. Mendelssohn knew this, as he also understood Beethoven and the public, when he wrote his dance overture, “A Summer-night’s Dream.” Auber, Herold and others wrote dance overtures _en masse_, and we often find more piquant themes in them than Beethoven’s A major symphony, or Mendelssohn’s Summer-night’s Dream can boast of, yet we do not prefer them for the concert.

All compositions for an orchestra, be they overture or symphony, must first contain a theme, which expresses the character of the principal composition. Second, the expansions of compositions in the style of a symphony, must, according to my opinion, originate from _one theme_, germinate from _one_ seed, growing larger and stronger all the time, until the swelling bud bursts into a beautiful blossom; yet there must not be orange-blossoms on an oak-tree; all must fit harmoniously.

The theme, _sujet_, or _motive_, must be a fixed idea, such as “love;” it must be ever present—the first at day-break, the last at night—no other impression must be strong enough to erase it.

If, by the blossom, you understand the creation of a second thought, often called the second theme, even this second theme ought to be governed by the first, even this blossom ought to glow in the same colors. It must be so twined around the heart of the composer, that nothing foreign could possibly enter it. Merely thematical productions are exercises for the pupil; compositions which merely contain parts composed by rule, are merely a musical exercise. Lobe certainly is wrong, if he thus teaches the art of composing.

True, it is easy to point out how one part belongs here, the other there, yet the composition must be a free expression of the soul.

Third—The finishing of the same. This must also be governed in its main parts by the predominating feeling, and only minor thoughts and impressions must be used by the composer to fill up or cast away.

Let us now turn, for illustration, to the theme of Wagner’s overture to Faustus. In the introduction we first see it in the eighth measure, very moderate, in the dominant d minor, commencing with the notes a ā | b^b b^b. a | g _sharp_, and headed “very expressive,” concerning which Von Bulow observes, that it truly expresses the feeling and character of the last lines of the motto which Wagner chose at the heading:

“Thus life to me a dire burden is; Existence I despise, for death I wish.”

If we designate the above-mentioned theme by figure I. we must name the figure which already makes its appearance in the second measure, and which is of the utmost importance, to wit, d _sharp_, e, f, f, e, e, b, b, figure II., the first theme having been expressed by the violin, the second figure reappears again in the tenth measure, executed by the viola, growling like a furiously racked demon, while the wind instruments, flute, oboe and clarionet, “very expressive,” and yet full of sympathizing sorrow, intervene at the last quarter of the tenth measure with the motive, which we will call figure III. Figure II. continues rumbling in the quartette, relieved by another figure (IV.) descending from above, which is introduced by the second violin in the fourteenth measure. Figure IV. now extends itself further above a chromatic bass, until in the nineteenth measure, in d major, a clear and distinct new motive, gentle and forgiving in character (V.) makes its appearance.

These five motives which the composer so exquisitely leads before us, in his very moderate introduction, now receive the finishing-touch in the allegro. Thus speaks Von Bulow.

Truly, as Goethe says: “If you perform a piece, be sure to perform the same in pieces.”

I will pass over the introduction, though I have as little taste for such “theme pieces” succeeding each other, as for Opera-overtures, such as that of Tannhäuser, where pilgrim-songs, the love-sick murmurings of the voluptuous Venus, and the tedious Count’s drawling sorrow for his only daughter and heir, form a hash, which in the details, and in the heterogeneous compilation of the same, is unpalatable enough, but which is made unbearable by the soul-killing figures—no! not figures, but by the up and down strokes of monotonous bases, which continue for about sixty measures. Setting aside even all this, we may justly expect in the allegro the expansion of the principle theme I., yet we have no such thing; in place of the “idea” he produces after the first five measures a worthless figure, fit for accompaniment only, which is supported on its tottering basis by the twenty-seven times repeated downstroke of the conductor only.

Q. Excuse me; but the tone-picture, which Von Bulow, R. Wagner’s friend and admirer, calls the forgiving voice (III), reappears twice in wind-instrument music?

A. According to Lobe’s system. Borrow a measure or two from a theme, then a motive, which you may construct from this or that or a third figure, and you have, besides the required unity, the grandest variation.

Do you know, my young friend, what a composer understands by an exploded idea? The technical! All who study the art of composing, as Lobe teaches it, may learn to become _compilers_ but _not composers_; or they must drink elder-tea, till their visions appear black and blue to them, in order to evaporate the schooling they enjoyed. After twenty-seven measures of earthly smoke, there appears a solitary star, theme I., continuing for four whole measures, followed by a little more mist.

Q. No; I think Bulow says the mist is parted by a firm and punctuated motive.

A. If it is not firm, it is at least _fortissimo_. Enough, we again hear thirteen measures of unimportant music, concluded by d minor, followed by a new melody for a hautboy, which, as it repeats the two first notes of the first theme, may claim to be considered as belonging there, leading to a third in f major, in company with a tremulando, _à la Samiel_, crescendo and diminuendo. We have now arrived at the point where we may look for the second theme, “the blossom,” as we before said, but alas, in vain your tortured soul waits, no blossoms! The thermometer sinks again! With the cadence we again hear theme I., after four measures we find ourselves once more in d _flat_ major—no, in a minor, b _flat_ major or b _flat_ minor, or g minor, it is difficult to say which, for this part may be said to belong in the “most inseparably combined, the closest related family of all keys.” Enough, we find ourselves after twenty-six measures exactly at the very place we started from, before the performance of twenty-six measures, namely, in f major.

This movement of twenty-six measures might be wholly thrown out, without one being any wiser—a possibility which, in every good composition, must be looked upon as a great fault, as all parts must be so closely united as to enforce the presence and support of each other.

We will now look at the second theme. In it no critic can find a fault. It unravels itself smoothly, and, after forty-nine measures, conducts us again to motive V. in the introduction, as likewise to figure II., which here does not frown quite so much.

Figure V. first appears in f, after twenty-two measures in g _flat_ major, after fourteen more in A minor, after thirty-four in d minor, and after another thirty-nine measures we at last hear theme I. again, in the dominant of the bass, a Faustus with lantern jaws, sunken temples, sparse hair, but with a very, very magnificent bread-basket.

The blossom is larger than the whole tree. If it is not a miracle, it is a wonderful abortion. Are you now curious as to the second part? Oh! it almost appears like a fugue, the bass dies away, a fifth higher the cello commences, another fifth higher the viola in unison with the second violin; but as the composer has strayed already from d minor to b minor, he does not think it safe to stray further; the wind instruments continue by themselves in figure II.

Q. Bulow says the cello and viola united, once more introduce the principal theme.

A. Just so. After the bassoon has tried twice to begin the same, after about thirty measures of worldly ether, more devoid of stars than the South Pole, it is headed “wild!” The leading theme once more begins in the principal tonic (d minor), etc., afterwards enlarged, the first two notes converted, caught up by the cello and the trumpet, wherein the bass-trombone is expected to perform the high A, and after twenty-eight measures of “hated existence” the second theme in d major, together with the finale, appears like a short bright ray of the glorious sun on a misty winter day.

“He, who reigns above my powers, Cannot shake the outer towers”—

is Wagner’s motto, which he has justly chosen for the heading of his overture, and I attempt no alteration only at the conclusion, and close with—

“In such music existence a burden is, The future I hate, for the End I wish.”

Q. Bulow would also answer as Goethe:

“To understand and write of living things, Try first to drive away the soul, The _parts_ will then remain within your hand!”

A. I have never found fault with these parts, excepting, perhaps, that I said the working out of the second theme is, in proportion to the first theme, too extensive; in fact, there is nothing of the future contained in the overture.

Q. No future?

A. I mean to say, no music of the future—not even a chromatic scale for the fundamental key—it moves entirely in the common form:

Principal theme—d minor;

Second theme—f major;

Return to fundamental key;

Second theme—d major, and conclusion in this key.

The finish and working up is neat and careful, and many pretty and uncommon effects occur therein; still I do not think the same in its proper place for a concert.

It inherits nothing of the Bach; the _piece_ is well constructed, yet the _small pieces_ cannot escape criticism. Even Beethoven, in the first movements of his _Eroica_ makes us acquainted with all the parts he intends to work up, and in his c minor symphony he says plainly: Now observe; the notes g g g e _flat_ compose the whole, nothing more. But after that it is a rushing flow, an unbroken ring and song, pressing breathlessly onward, which captivates and carries us along with its force. To express myself plainly, I may say that we can perceive the work _was done_ before it began.

It is true, and I will not deny that even he applied the file to heighten its polish, yet the whole structure stood finished to his vision before even these first four notes were penned.

No doubt R. Wagner also imagined a picture before he painted it, but surely no musical one; the poetry was there—the music had to be manufactured. It is full of genius, and not untrue; but he does not allow sufficient freedom to the different instruments, and is, consequently, not sufficiently “obligato.”

The parts succeed, instead of going in company or against each other.

Although now one, then another instrument catches up a thought, yet the whole appears more like a Quartette of Pleyel than one of Beethoven’s—the overture is not thought out polyphonically. Many, however, do not know what Polyphonism is; it has been written about in many curious ways. The pupil will best learn to write music in a polyphonic manner, if, at the commencement, he invents at once a double-voiced movement, but in such a manner that one voice is not the subordinate of the other; both are equally necessary to represent the meaning of the thought he wishes to express.

In this manner he may or must continue in regard to the three or four-voiced movements likewise.

The addition of voices to a melody satisfactory in itself, be they ever so well flourished, cannot properly be called polyphonism.

Polyphonism, however, should be the ruling principle in all orchestral concert compositions, although in some points, for instance, in the second theme, homophony may take its place.

A well composed symphony or overture must not entertain the audience only, but every performing musician must feel that he is not an instrument or a machine, but a living and intelligent being.

The overture to Faustus so entirely ignores Polyphony, that it seems a virtual denial of its effectiveness and importance in orchestral composition.

Richard Wagner will never become a composer of instrumental music, but in his operas he has opened a new avenue, and his creations therein are something grand and sublime.

SCHOPENHAUER’S DOCTRINE OF THE WILL. Translated from the German, by C. L. BERNAYS.

[We print below a condensed statement of the central doctrine of Arthur Schopenhauer. It is translated from his work entitled “_Ueber den Willen in der Natur_,” 2d ed., 1854, Frankfort—pp. 19-23, and 63. To those familiar with the kernel of speculative truth, it is unnecessary to remark that the basis of the system herewith presented is thoroughly speculative, and resembles in some respects that of Leibnitz in the Monadology, printed in our last number. It is only an attempt to solve all problems through self-determination, and this in its immediate form as the will. Of course the immediateness (i. e. lack of development or realization) of the principle employed here, leads into difficulty, and renders it impossible for him to see the close relation he stands in to other great thinkers. Hence he uses very severe language when speaking of other philosophers. If the Will is taken for the “Radical of the Soul,” then other forms of self-determination, e. g. the grades of knowing, will not be recognized as possessing substantiality, and hence the theoretical mind will be subordinated to the practical;—a result, again, which is the outcome of the Philosophy of Fichte. But Leibnitz seizes a more general _aperçu_, and identifies self-determination with cognition in its various stages; and hence he rises to the great principle of Recognition as the form under which all finitude is cancelled—all multiplicity preserved in the unity of the Absolute.—EDITOR.]

The idea of a soul as a metaphysical being, in whose absolute simplicity will and intellect were an indissoluble unity, was a great and permanent impediment to all deeper insight into natural phenomena. The cardinal merit of my doctrine, and that which puts it in opposition to all the former philosophies, is the perfect separation of the will from the intellect. All former philosophers thought will to be inseparable from the intellect; the will was declared to be conditioned upon the intellect, or even to be a mere function of it, whilst the intellect was regarded as the fundamental principle of our spiritual existence. I am well aware that to the future alone belongs the recognition of this doctrine, but to the future philosophy the separation, or rather the decomposition of the soul into two heterogeneous elements, will have the same significance as the decomposition of water had to chemistry. Not the soul is the eternal and indestructible or the very principle of life in men, but what I might call the Radical of the soul, and that is the _Will_. The so-called soul is already a compound; it is the combination of will and the νοῦς, intellect. The intellect is the secondary, the _posterius_ in any organism, and, as a mere function of the brain, dependent upon the organism. The will, on the contrary, is primary, the _prius_ of the organism, and the organism consequently is conditioned by it. For the will is the very “thing in itself,” which in conception (that is, in the peculiar function of the brain) exhibits itself as an organic body. Only by virtue of the forms of cognition, that is, by virtue of that function of the brain—hence only in conception—one’s body is something extended and organic, not outside of it, or immediately in self-consciousness. Just as the various single acts of the body are nothing but the various acts of the will portrayed in the represented world, just so is the shape of this body as a totality the image of its will as a whole. In all organic functions of the body, therefore, just as in its external actions, the will is the “_agens_.” True physiology, on its height, shows the intellect to be the product of the physical organization, but true metaphysics show, that physical existence itself is the product, or rather the appearance, of a spiritual _agens_, to-wit, the will; nay, that matter itself is conditioned through conception, in which alone it exists. Perception and thought may well be explained by the nature of the organism; the will never can be; the contrary is true, namely, that every organism originates by and from the will. This I show as follows:

I therefore posit the will as the “thing in itself”—as something absolutely primitive; secondly, the simple visibility of the will, its objectivation as our body; and thirdly, the intellect as a mere function of a certain part of that body. That part (the brain) is the objectivated desire (or will) to know, which became represented: for the will, to reach its ends, needs the intellect. This function again pre-supposes the whole world as representation; it therefore pre-supposes also the body as an object, and even matter itself, so far as existing only in representation, for an objective world without a subject in whose intellect it stands, is, well considered, something altogether unthinkable. Hence intellect and matter (subject and object) only relatively exist for each other, and in that way constitute the apparent world.

Whenever the will acts on external matter, or whenever it is directed towards a known object, thus passing through the medium of knowledge, then all recognize that the _agens_, which here is in action, is the will, and they call it by that name. Yet, that is will not less which acts in the inner process that precedes those external actions as their condition, which create and preserve the organic life and its substrate; and secretion, digestion, and the circulation of the blood, are its work also. But just because the will was recognized only while leaving the individual from which it started, and directing itself to the external world, which precisely for that purpose now appears as perception, the intellect was regarded as its essential condition, as its sole element, and as the very substance out of which it was made, and thereby the very worst _hysteron proteron_ was committed that ever happened.

Before all, one should know how to discriminate between will and arbitrariness (_Wille und Willkühr_), and one should understand that the first can exist without the second. Will is called arbitrariness where it is lighted by intellect, and whenever motives or conceptions are its moving causes; or, objectively speaking, whenever external causes which produce an act are mediated by a brain. The motive may be defined as an external irritation, by whose influence an image is formed in the brain, and under the mediation of which the will accomplishes its effect, that is, an external act of the body. With the human species the place of that image may be occupied by a concept, which being formed from images of a similar kind, by omitting the differences, is no longer intuitive, but only marked and fixed by words. Hence as the action of motives is altogether independent of any contact, they therefore can measure their respective forces upon the will, on each other, and thereby permit a certain choice. With the animals, that choice is confined to the narrow horizon of what is visibly projected before them; among men it has the wide range of the _thinkable_, or of its concepts, as its sphere. Those movements, therefore, which result from motives, and not from causes, as in the inorganic world, nor from mere irritation, as with the plants, are called arbitrary movements. These motives pre-suppose knowledge, the medium of the motives, through which in this case causality is effected, irrespective of their absolute necessity in any other respect. Physiologically, the difference between irritation and motive may be described thus: Irritation excites a reaction _immediately_, the reaction issuing from the same part upon which the irritation had acted; whilst a motive is an irritation, which must make a circuit through the brain, where first an image is formed, and that image then originates the ensuing reaction, which now is called an act of the free will. Hence the difference between free and unfree movements does not concern the essential and primary, which in both is the will, but only the secondary, that is, the way in which the will is aroused; to-wit, whether it shows itself in consequence of some real cause, or of an irritation, or of a motive, that is, of a cause that had to pass through the organ of the intellect.

Free will or arbitrariness is only possible in the consciousness of men. It differs from the consciousness of animals in this, that it contains not only present and tangible representations, but abstract concepts, which, independent of the differences of time, act simultaneously and side by side, permitting thereby conviction or a conflict of motives; this, in the strictest sense of the word, is called free will. Yet this very free will or choice consists only in the victory of the stronger motive over a weaker in a given individual character, by which the ensuing action was determined, just as one impulse is overpowered by a stronger counter impulse, whereby the effect nevertheless appears with the same necessity as the movement of a stone that has received an impulse. The great thinkers of all times agree in this decidedly; while, on the contrary, the vulgar will little understand the great truth, that the mark of our liberty is not to be found in our single acts, but in our existence itself, and in its very essence. Whenever one has succeeded to discriminate will from free will, or the arbitrary, and to consider the latter as a peculiar species of the former, then there is no more room for any difficulty in discovering the will also in occurrences wherein intelligence cannot be traced.

* * * * *

The will is the original. It has created the world, but not through the medium of an intellect either outside or inside of the world, for we know of the intellect only through the mediation of the animal world, the very last in creation. The will itself, the unintentional will which is discovered in everything, is the creator of the world. The animals, therefore, are organized in accordance with their mode of living, and their mode of living is not shaped in conformity with their organs; the structure of any animal is the result of its will to be what it is. Nature, which never lies, tells us the same in its _naïve_ way; it lets any being just kindle the first spark of its life on one of his equals, and then lets it finish itself before our eyes. The form and the movement it takes from its own self, the substance from outside. This is called growth and development. Thus even empirically do all beings stand before us as their own work; but the language of nature is too simple, and therefore but few understand it.

Cognition, since all motives are dependent on it, is the essential characteristic of the animal kingdom. When animal life ceases, cognition ceases also; and arrived at that point, we can comprehend the medium by which the influences from the external world on the movements of other beings are effected only by analogy, whilst the will, which we have recognized as the basis and as the very kernel of all beings, always and everywhere remains the same. On the low stage of the vegetable world, and of the vegetative life in the animal organizations, it is _irritation_, and in the inorganic world it is the mechanical relation in general which appears as the substitute or as the analogue of the intellect. We cannot say that the plants perceive the light and the sun, but we see that they are differently affected by the presence or absence of the sun, and that they turn themselves towards it; and though in fact that movement mostly coincides with their growth, like the rotation of the moon with its revolution, that movement nevertheless exists, and the direction of the growth of a plant is just in the same way determined and systematically modified as an action is by a motive. Inasmuch, therefore, as a plant has its wants, though not of the kind which require a sensorium or an intellect, something analogous must take their place to enable the will to seize at least a supply offered to it, if not to go in quest of it. This is the susceptibility for irritation, which differs from the intellect, in that the motive and subsequent act of volition are clearly separated from each other, and the clearer, the more perfect the intellect is; whilst at the mere susceptibility for an irritation, the feeling of the irritation and the resulting volition can no longer be discriminated. In the inorganic world, finally, even the susceptibility for irritation, whose analogy with the intellect cannot be mistaken, ceases, and there remains nothing but the varied reaction of the bodies against the various influences. This reaction is the substitute for the intellect. Whenever the reaction of a body differs from another, the influence also must be different, creating a different affection, which even in its dullness yet shows a remote analogy with the intellect. If, for instance, the water in an embankment finds an issue and eagerly precipitates itself through it, it certainly does not perceive the break, just as the acid does not perceive the alkali, for which it leaves the metal; yet we must confess that what in all these bodies has effected such sudden changes, has a certain resemblance with that which moves ourselves whenever we act in consequence of an unexpected motive. We therefore see that the intellect appears as the medium of our motives, that is, as the medium of causality in regard to intellectual beings, as that which receives the change from the external world, and which must be followed by a change in ourselves, as the mediator between both. On this narrow line, balances the whole world as representation, i. e. that whole extensive world in space and time, which as such cannot be anywhere else but in our brain, just as dreams; for the periods of their duration stand on the very same basis. Whatever to the animals and to man is given by his intellect as a medium of the motives, the same is given to the plants by their susceptibility for irritation, and to inorganic bodies by their reaction on the various causes, which in fact only differ in respect to the degree of volition; for, just in consequence of the fact, that in proportion to their wants the susceptibility for external impressions was raised to such a degree in the animals that a brain and a system of nerves had to develop itself, did consciousness, moreover, originate as a function of this brain, and in this consciousness the whole objective world, whose forms (time, space and causality) are the rules for the exercise of this function. We therefore discover that the intellect is calculated only for the subjective, merely to be a servant of the will, appearing only “_per accidens_” as a condition of animal life, where motives take the place of irritation. The picture of the external world, which at this stage enters into the forms of time and space, is but the background on which motives represent themselves as ends; it is also the condition of the connection of the external objects in regard to space and causality, but yet is nothing else but the mediation and the tie between the motive and the will. What a leap would it be to take this picture to be the true, ultimate essence of things,—this image of the world, which originates accidentally in the intellect as a function of animal brains, whereby the means to their ends are shown them, and their ways on this planet cleared up! What a temerity to take this image and the connection of its parts to be the absolute rule of the world, the relations of the things in themselves—and to suppose that all that could just as well exist independently of our brain! And yet this supposition is the very ground on which all the dogmatical systems previous to Kant were based, for it is the implicit pre-supposition of their Ontology, Cosmology, Theology, and of all their Eternal Verities.

By this realistic examination we have gained very unexpectedly the _objective_ point of view of Kant’s immortal discovery, arriving by our empirical, physiological way to the same point whence Kant started with his transcendental criticism. Kant made the subjective his basis, positing consciousness; but from its _à priori_ nature he comes to the result, that all that happens in it can be nothing else but representation. We, on the contrary, starting from the objective, have discovered what are the ends and the origin of the intellect, and to what class of phenomena it belongs. We discover in _our_ way, that the intellect is limited to mere representations, and that what is exhibited in it is conditioned by the subject, that is, a _mundane phenomenon_, and that just in the same way the order and the connection of all external things is conditioned by the subject, and is never a knowledge of what they are in themselves, and how they may be connected with each other. We, in our way, like Kant in his, have discovered that the world as representation, balances on that narrow line between the external cause (motive) and the produced effect (act of will) of intelligent (animal) beings, where the clear discrimination of the two commences. _Ita res accendent lumina rebus._

Our objective stand-point is realistic, and therefore conditioned, inasmuch as starting from natural beings as posited, we have abstracted from the circumstance that their objective existence presupposes an intellect, in which they find themselves as representations; but Kant’s subjective and idealistic stand-point is equally conditioned, inasmuch as it starts from the intellect, which itself is conditioned by nature, in consequence of whose development up to the animal world it only comes into existence. Holding fast to this, our _realistic-objective_ stand-point, Kant’s doctrine may be characterized thus: after Locke had abstracted the _rôle_ of the senses, under the name of “secondary properties,” for the purpose of distinguishing things in themselves from things as they appear, Kant, with far greater profundity, abstracted the _rôle_ of the brain functions [conceptions of the understanding]—a less considerable _rôle_ than that of the senses—and thus abstracted as belonging to the subjective all that Locke had included under the head of primary properties. I, on the other hand, have merely shown why all stands thus in relation, by exhibiting the position which the intellect assumes in the System of Nature when we start realistically from the objective as a datum, and take the WILL, of which alone we are immediately conscious, as the true που στῶ of all metaphysics—as the essence of which all else is only the phenomenon.

INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY.